GREEN ISLAND
On Cities, Hortus and Wild Gardens

FLYER

GREEN ISLAND MANIFESTO
Zona Isola Milan

Green Island is an active territorial workshop, the first public art project on the streets of Isola area. Developed in via Pepe, behind Garibaldi railway station, together with a series of small crafts & labs that sprung up along alongside those already present in the area and the historic shops of ironmongers, carpenters and violin makers. A “widely scattered” spread of creativity to be found among the studios of artists, architects and designers, who have long considered this area of the city as their headquarter.

Green Island is a collective project, developed for and with the Isola area, without breachs and tensions, unlike other realities.

The area of via Pepe is an outlying district, around the back of a railway station, near the centre yet separated from the rest of the city by a wall running between the neighbourhood and the railway tracks. For years, the shadows behind that wall have been a host for all nature of urban residues: drug dealing, prostitution, delinquency. The backdrop was provided by urban waste and piles of rubbish bags.
Along with the small crafts workshops of Via Pepe, our association became the spearhead of the drive to renovate the street. And so, little by little, the street was cleaned up: fewer piles of rubbish left for weeks on end; better street lighting; angle parking. A bit further on there is even a short cycle path. And the Railways Team have also made their own little contribution, turning a dusty unauthorised parking lot into a green area.

The urban “makeover” project thus started out from a collective cultural initiative.

However, the grey reinforced cement wall was yet to be transformed, from a barrier into a “landscape” element. The idea of large-scale images for exteriors was put into action through the application of posters onto the wall like a kind of “second skin”. Those invited to contribute (architects, artists, designers and photographers) envisaged a project dedicated to green areas. The wall was thus turned into a “landscape”, a membrane between the inside and out, between the neighbourhood and the city, between cement and nature.

On the other side of the wall, Platform 20 of the Garibaldi Railway Station become a new expositive venue, where objects of everyday use and common projects are put on show; a new approach to contemporary means of display. Crafts workshops and artists’ studios opened their doors and all came together to take part in the implementation of a “green” theme to the neighbourhood. The reappraisal process was completed by the addition of Music. After years of silence, thanks to Green Island and the involvement of small neighbourhood bands, the local accordion school based in via Pepe and headed by maestro Nunzio Ferrante was reopened.

Out of these concrete and positive experiences, new parallel projects  were developed:

- Isola Talks&Walks, the natural continuation of the Green Island activities as urban recognition and reinterpretation with walks, meetings, conferences, held with the aim of experimenting common spaces of production and culture at Isola.
-UN'ISOLA, a video dedicated to ISOLA neighbourhood and Green Island event.
- Isolagaribaldi.net, the first and the only collective website with more than 120 local realities actively subscribed, from the plumbing to the architect. The website  also offers a detailed map of the neighborugh.
- MetroCult, conceived by Cultural Department Provincia di Milano for good urban practises and the sharing of territorial projects.
- ECO Isola, recent project presented during the cultural events of “Fuori Salone” with a network of artisans and designers, on sustainability and the reuse of every day objects.
- Oasi Verde Garibaldi, a special project by the architect Andrea Branzi,conceived as an hanging garden for the renewed Garibaldi Train Station.
- Vetrine&Design, a special project in the front of windows shops, art and and crafts labs in the main area Borsieri/Revel to host design objects produced as part of the Master in Interactive Design on the theme of sustainability and social design in collaboration with the IUAV University of Venice.
-DID – Distretto Isola Design, a network to valorise the highpoints of creativity and design to be found in the Isola neighbourhood. Workshops of artists, artisans and designers along 10 streets of the neighbourhood are linked in a circular route that stimulates environmental respect, the belonging to a local community, art, food, fashion and design. Exhibitions, performances, cocktails, music, debates, lectures for the development of the neighbourhood and a sustainable philosophy.

Up to now more than 150 artists and theoreticians took part in Green Island.
These some edition of Green Island have been supported by prestigious private and institutional partners, between the others: Cento Stazioni, Stazione Garibaldi; VirtualGallery, Modo Fotografia; Parametro; Museo Alessi; Politecnico di Milano; Provincia di Milano; Settore Verde Comune di Milano; Giardino degli Aromi, Geboing, VerdiSegni; Artigiani e Laboratori di via Pepe, via Pastrengo, via Borsieri, via Carmagnola - Zona Isola Milano.

Projects, text, images: A12; A4A; Archimuse; Costanza Algranti; Francesca Appiani; Aldo Ballo; Atelier Le Balto; Andrea  Branzi; Giorgio Barrera; 2A+P; Domenica Bucalo; Cantieri Isola; GIlles Clement; Cesare Colombo; Catherine David; Crtical Garden; Achille Castiglioni; Mario Cresci; F38F; Ettore Favini; Flying Grass Carpet; Futur System; Luigi Ghirri; Giorgio Grandi; Green Guerilla; Temporary Garden; Isola della Moda; HOV-David Raponi; Francesco Jodice; Andrea Lissoni; Marco Introini; Toyo Ito; ma-0; Ton Matton; Medusa Group; Maria Mulas; Bruno Munari; Michela Pasquali; Park Fiction; Boris Podrecca; Francesco Radino; Marco Romanelli; Paolo Rosselli; Aldo Rossi; Ciro Frank Schiappa; Ettore Sottssas; Alessandra Spranzi; Studio EU; Tom Trevor; Lois&Franziska Weinberger; Caterina Weiss; Silvio Wolf; Cristina Zamagni; Francesco Zucchetti
Street music by: Nunzio e la sua Band
Guided tours at Terragni architectures by: Maria Vittoria Capitanucci, Politecnico di Milano
Conceived and edited by: Claudia Zanfi, director aMAZElab, Milano