Social housing rehabilitation | Ottavio Di Blasi

Ponte Lambro’s “white houses” are two blocks of council houses measuring 259 metres in length, where over 250 families live. Social disorder and law-breaking are the everyday life here. The Neighbourhood Workshop will be directly incorporated in the old buildings, to provide a meaning of redeveloping. The idea is that the ground floors will once again hold activities and workshops, the first floors will cater for offices, and the levels just below the roof will provide a fresh resource. A “laboratory” is a way of avoiding any “heavy-handed” demolition work; just minor demolition operations would be done, to break up the houses’ monotony and allow new activities to be incorporated. The change is not the result of a “stylistic” project, abstractly designed at the drawing board, but rather the consequence of the way the various functions have been incorporated in the new layout, as well as the homeopathic medicine uses only a small dose of active ingredient to produce a cure.