Some are still processing Design Week, but Milan is already getting back into the swing of things with Milan Arch Week, which runs until 26 April 2024. This city-wide event features over 80 events in 46 different locations, from historic sites like Triennale Milano and Politecnico to the outskirts, including Chiaravalle and Rozzano. Milan Arch Week offers the local public, professionals, and enthusiasts alike an opportunity for discussion and debate on the major themes of urban living. This year, the focus is on the challenges and potential of “weak architecture”, an approach that, rather than aiming for the wow factor, listens to the needs and dreams of citizens, engaging in respectful dialogue with the territory and landscape, considering the city as “an infinite set of small things”. The 2024 edition aims to honor the legacy of two recently missed great masters who supported this vision through their work: philosopher Gianni Vattimo, author of Weak Thought, and designer and architect Andrea Branzi, with his Weak and Diffuse Modernity.

Among the guests at the public program to be held at Triennale are Boonserm Premthada (on May 23), founder of Bangkok Project Studio, whose work reflects on the environment, combining sustainability with material culture and construction techniques; Peris+Toral Arquitectes (on May 24), a Barcelona-based studio that experiments with various approaches to contemporary social housing; Alessandro Petti and Sandi Hilal (on May 25), founders of the collective DAAR, winners of the Golden Lion at the 2023 Architecture Biennale; the Barcelona-based studio Flores y Prats (also on May 25), known for their social housing and public space projects realized through active citizen involvement; and last but certainly not least, Francisco Alonso (on May 26), one of the most interesting voices in Spanish architecture since the 1980s, professor at ETSAM in Madrid and UPSA in Salamanca. Besides these meetings, here are the recommendations we have gathered for you throughout the city.

May 21-26, 2024, 2:00 PM - 8:00 PM
For over a century, kiosks have served as devices for activating public space. They are quintessential weak architectures, spread throughout the urban fabric, attracting diverse populations and facilitating aggregation and conviviality. The Kiosk of Reciprocity for Milan's network of hybrid socio-cultural spaces and the Kiosk of Solidarity for Berlin's Urbane Praxis network are designed to activate convivial spaces, promote awareness of urban issues and urgencies, and support a collaborative economy within local communities.

May 21-26, 2024, 1:00 PM - 8:00 PM – Martesana Amphitheater
The multidisciplinary Kubo Collective presents an architectural manifesto inspired by the Filipino concept of "bayanihan," which involves moving a house with the help of neighbors, thus forming a community. Architecture is thus seen as a tool with a unifying power for society, especially for minorities.

May 22, 2024, 10:00 AM - 6:00 PM – Politecnico di Milano
An exhibition and public program promoted by Sophia Bradner, Tom Huntingford, and Stasica Aleksandra Anna, based on work done during the Architectural Design Studio course dedicated to the theme "Why is Living in Milan So Exhausting?". This event offers a reflection on contemporary living, the city, and the relationship with existing buildings. After all, those who live in Milan can only confirm this perpetual existential condition of feeling well yet exhausted.

May 22, 2024 - January 12, 2025 – Triennale Milano
The exhibition meticulously and captivatingly traces the existential and professional history of Gae Aulenti, highlighting the intersections between architecture and the arts, as well as culture and politics. Curated by Giovanni Agosti with Nina Artioli and Nina Bassoli, in collaboration with the Gae Aulenti Archive and with an exhibition design by Tspoon, the show aims to offer a comprehensive re-evaluation of Aulenti's career through a 1:1 scale, chronological reconstruction of a sequence of environments she designed, seamlessly interlocking one with the next.

May 23, 2024, 8:00 PM - 10:00 PM – Dropcity – via Sammartini 38-60
The event addresses the fear that women and gender minorities are still forced to feel when navigating urban public spaces, especially in the evening and at night. The meeting consists of two parts: the presentation of the book Free, Not Brave. Women and Fear in Public Space by Florencia Andreola and Azzurra Muzzonigro (LetteraVentidue, 2024) and a collective walk through the spaces surrounding the Central Station and Dropcity, which are among those perceived by women as the riskiest areas in the city. This serves as a kind of collective urban catharsis.

May 24-26, 2024, 2:00 PM - 5:00 PM – Garden of the Museum of via Granelli (Sesto San Giovanni), Leoncavallo (Milan)
Abandoned buildings are gradually forgotten by the city, as if they sink into it, or rather, they change their ontology while continuing to occupy the same urban space. The goal of this project is to "awaken" these places, breathing new life into them, however ephemeral and transitory, by transforming them into resonating chambers, concert spaces, and music rooms for free concerts.

May 22-26, 2024, 11:00 AM - 5:00 PM – Chiaravalle Pavilion
The Terzo Paesaggio studio invites 10 guests who dwell at the border between various disciplines to inspire a new collective concept that will take shape over time, a modular mobile architecture born from a series of workshops. Following the already activated Mobile Bread Oven, the system will be completed by the Alchemical Laboratory and the Urban Refuge. The idea is to activate learning landscapes where "collective intelligence" can be exercised.

May 24-26, 2024, 4:00 PM - 7:30 PM – via Carlo Pascal 35 and via Aselli 28
Urban Effect is a three-day event featuring talks preceded by free and open workshops (also to passersby) to discuss extracurricular open spaces, cycling mobility, the relationship between schools and the city, public spaces and society, and the environment. These are all hot topics in Milan (and beyond). The idea is to reclaim a public space usually occupied by cars or abandoned electric scooters: the sidewalk.

May 24-26, 2024, 3:00 PM - 7:00 PM – Dropcity
Superpublic! revolves around the concept defined by SMALL as "Superpublic Building": a type of urban project halfway between a building and public space. SMALL invites various emerging architecture studios to create micro-prototypes of Superpublic Buildings, which will then be exhibited within the installation.

May 25, 2024, 2:00 PM - 2:00 AM – Fattoria San Giuda, Rozzano
A festival day organized by the creative studio Rurales, featuring artistic and musical performances, screenings, DJ sets, a communal lunch on the lawn, and meetings with Italian and foreign artists, designers, curators, and architects. An occasion to celebrate marginal agricultural spaces, halfway between what has been designed and what has not. An open space for the possibility of self-construction and self-determination, and for all the hybrids it can embrace.

Opening image: Variétés Cultural Laboratory, Brussels. Photo Adrià Goula