A research line in architecture and interior design has been focused for years on the selection of materials with properties specifically tailored for light, thermal and acoustic comforts. An adaptive origami-based structure is here proposed in order to overcome the limited capability of a single material to adjust its response to environmental changes. Such structure is highly flexible, with applications ranging from indoor to outdoor environments. We focus on building facades, to show some results relevant to a small-scale prototype aimed to provide shading to the sunlight

The article contributes to understanding public transport as a public space by exploring diversity and the city through mobility. It investigates the compressed and mobile space of the 90/91 trolleybus in Milan. Due to its itinerary and extended schedule, this bus is intensively used by citizens with different ethnic, economic, social and cultural backgrounds. Literature on planning and transport has recently started exploring qualitative issues through individual ethnographic research on transport means. Research on everyday multiculturalism, despite recognising the role of public transport as a promising space to study the negotiation of difference, rarely adopts this specific focus and does it mainly from a socio-anthropological point of view. Against this background, the work investigates the compressed space of a bus through an ethnographic exploration of people, spaces and practices onboard. Notably, the article is is grounded on direct observation carried out by three classes of students in the Urban Ethnography course offered in the MSc in Urban Planning and Architecture at Politecnico di Milano, and presents a post-hoc reflection on the outcomes of the teaching project. Grounding on this experience, the article argues that the compressed and mobile space of public transport is an excellent observation point to investigate everyday negotiation of difference and a privileged observatory of broader city dynamics. Additionally, the multiplication of points of view embedded in the observations and experiences of students has proved how, in the face of increasingly diverse cities, pluralisation may be a key methodological approach.

This article explores the notion of arrival spaces in the recent urban studies literature, and it outlines three emerging perspectives on their role and the associated processes and complexities. Recently, within changing migratory trajectories, the dimension of arrival has gained increasing relevance, and scholars have discussed the growing complexity underpinning it. Within this framework, some contributions reflect on the role of arrival spaces, which currently represent a rapidly changing research subject. However, by the term ‘arrival space,’ authors refer to various types of space, and the article argues that a clearer reference to the spatial dimension of arrival is needed. Spaces are contexts where different actors interact and intervene in the city, and their understanding represents a preliminary step for future research. In this sense, this contribution aims to unpack the previous decade’s debate on arrival spaces. It outlines three main perspectives: The first discusses the role of trans-local contexts, working as nodes in international migration networks; the second follows the debate on arrival neighborhoods; the third suggests that arrival spaces may be defined as all those parts of the urban fabric with which newcomers interact at the moment of arrival. Finally, drawing from this review, the article underlines that arrival spaces are not only specialized areas with migrant newcomers’ concentration, but they may also be ordinary urban spaces that temporarily work for arrival. Hence, future research should further deepen this perspective and more explicitly investigate the relation of arrival spaces to the city and its actors.

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Drawing upon the debates on 'suburbanisms' and 'arrival space', this article explores the complexities for welfare governance in multiethnic peripheries.The paper bridges two themes of the contemporary 'suburban century': the intensified global migration flows and the peripheral condition of suburbs worldwide; the work refers to the Municipality of Pioltello, a multiethnic suburban area in Milan's region. This double-sided perspective reveals governance dynamics, here discussed through the concept of 'welfare offloading'. In the observed neighborhood, governmental complexities disclose profound interdependencies with the region's urban core and across municipalities; welfare tensions are 'offloaded' from the central core to peripheral regions.