Redevelopment of the Piazza Molino Nuovo area
The goals of the City Council are to give the square a strong identity as a public and gathering space for the district and the city, and to find new urban planning solutions for the area.
In October 2020, the Lugano City Parliament approved a credit of CHF 325,000 to conduct a parallel study mandate (MSP) procedure for the urban redevelopment of the Piazza Molino Nuovo area.
The municipality's goals are to give the square a strong identity as a public and gathering space for the district and the city and to find new urban planning solutions for the area, which is currently governed by a Detailed Plan from 1991.
The area that will benefit from the redevelopment is the central zone between Via Trevano and the Church Madonnetta, encompassing Piazza Molino Nuovo and the blocks up to Via Zurigo.
The invited MSP procedure allowed the identification of four design teams composed of professionals in the fields of planning, urban development, and architecture, who developed ideas and solutions for enhancing the area’s features and developing its potential.
The results of the MSP procedure, which concluded at the end of 2021, were presented in a public exhibition on the piazza of the USI-West Campus auditorium. The entire selection procedure was also documented in a dedicated publication.
The four groups selected by an expert panel to participate in the procedure were:
- Studi associati SA (planning and urban development, led by architect Felix Günther)
- Studio habitat.ch (planning and urban development, led by architect Francesca Pedrina)
- Guscetti architetti (planning and urban development, led by architect Giovanni Guscetti)
- CONT-S (urban development and architecture, led by architect Sabrina Contratto)
Objectives of the City
The Lugano City Council initiated the MSP procedure to review the content of the existing planning framework (PP2) and create new conditions to establish the district as a neighborhood center capable of catalyzing vital interests: housing, commerce, leisure, and services.
The design teams were asked to propose a new concept for the central sector of PP2, focusing on the following objectives:
- a proposal for an urban planning layout with particular attention to the three existing blocks, maintaining, in principle, the current division between public and private ownership
- the volumetric and architectural characterization of the three blocks, seeking feasible and high-quality solutions
- the design of Piazza Molino Nuovo in its current location (rather than the more southern position currently planned by PP2)
- the general redevelopment of public spaces characterizing the district, considering all aspects related to mobility
The result of the MSP procedure and next steps
The Board of Experts has completed the analysis of the projects from the four participating groups and, unanimously, recommended to the City Council the project by the CONT-S Group (led by architect Sabrina Contratto) as the reference basis for continuing the work. The Executive ratified this recommendation at the end of 2021.
Several recommendations were also made to enhance the proposals of the other design teams.
The results of the MSP procedure have thus allowed the identification of a new urban concept that will serve as the basis for amending the Detailed Plan and reorganizing public spaces.
The Divisione Pianificazione, ambiente e mobilità (Division of Planning, Environment and Mobility) is now working on the amendment to the Detailed Plan, which will follow an ordinary procedure under the Legge sullo sviluppo territoriale (Land Use Development Act).
As the next step, an architecture competition will be launched for the redevelopment of Piazza Molino Nuovo.
New Molino Square subdivision: vision of the CONT-S group.
The English version of this page was created with the aid of automatic translation tools and may contain errors and omissions.
The original version is the page in Italian.