Walking through the streets of the Paolo Sarpi district in Milan, it is impossible to ignore the traces of an intense process of gentrification that, over the past ten years, has profoundly transformed the ways in which public and private space are lived, perceived, and imagined. A symbol of this transformation is the ghost of the Sarpi-Bramante Block, the historic social housing complex owned by the Ospedale Maggiore, located between Via Sarpi, Via Niccolini, and Via Bramante, which for some years has stood in the neighborhood with its silent, wrapped façade. Sold in 2018 to a real estate fund for financing the builsing of a new hospital and intended for an immediate redevelopment project that included relocating its tenants to a distant suburban area, the Block instead sparked action among its historic residents, who, gathered in the Ca’ Sarpi Committee, defended their connection to that worn and beloved building, claiming the right to remain in their homes. From this mobilization, the residents not only obtained relocation within the neighborhood, where their roots remain firmly anchored to this day. They also left a profound mark, demonstrating that the home — with its rooms, its objects, and its stories — is not merely an asset at the mercy of the market, but the foundational place of our urban culture, an idea of the city worth fighting for.

This incredible story of collaboration, resistance, and citizenship has inspired the students’ project, in which they are asked to question their role as designers within these complex processes. Through interviews, meetings, and site visits, the stories of those lost homes have been reconstructed into fifteen handmade paper models and a community installation that will bring some of the symbolic spaces of the Block back to life. Gathered in celebration beneath these fragments of a disappearing city, students, residents, professors, ordinary citizens, friends, and passersby will be able to celebrate and honor the value of inhabiting as a collective experience, and to envision a future city still made of lived-in homes.