Architects want to hang a park over a Milan piazza

The garden is part of a proposal to radically rethink urban design and the value of public space

Spotted: Italian architecture firms LAD and Hynos Studio have designed a so-called “hanging garden” to recapture public space in Milan’s central Piazzale Loreto. The proposal (known as Sovraparco — Elevated Garden) would turn a not particularly attractive concrete and traffic-filled entrance of the city into an oasis of green. The two-story structure, shaped like a gigantic inverted disc, would create a haven above the chaos of traffic and noise for people to relax.

“Like a planet hosting a natural oasis, the garden is floating over the plaza; as it is a reversed shell, nothing is visible from the inside but the sky. The borders protect people from pollution and traffic noise, generating relative isolation inside,” architects Francesco Napolitano and Nicola Brembilla said in a proposal.

The floating piazza, as it’s been called, would hover above the square and stand in sharp contrast to the piazza below. “Piazzale Loreto is also a rather ugly place: nothing more than an automobile junction surrounded by buildings without any architectural value,” the architects said.

Sovraparco was presented during a convention in Rome on March 18, 2019. The city of Milan has mentioned the renovation of Piazzale Loreto but no date or set proposal for the work has been set.