Milano Certosa District. Milan

Graphics.
Environmental Graphics.
Identity&Branding.
Wayfinding.

Via Varesina 162. Milan / April 2025 / RealStep

The studio designed the wayfinding system and the new identity for the Milano Certosa District, as part of a major urban regeneration programme promoted by RealStep. The project opens reflections on urban identity, aiming to generate social value through an intervention that activates a positive and shared relationship with the local community. The orientation and wayfinding system develops as an identity-marking backbone throughout the neighbourhood and will increasingly welcome new residents in the coming years, together with workers and visitors who pass through the neighbourhood, a place home to “know-how”, which draws the strength of its character from the presence of its artisans, musicians and restaurateurs. The project is developed around the concepts of participation, multisensoriality and accessibility, building connections and storytelling from the district’s three drivers: Food, Music and Arts. This had led to the creation of a new symbol: a sort of propeller that helps to strengthen the identity of the district from a graphic perspective. It is a soft, friendly and recognisable presence that accompanies the visitor through all the neighbourhood’s areas of interest. Picking up on the orange colour that represents Milano Certosa District, the pin blends its three souls, which are in turn identified through the choice of a new palette with bright and luminous tones, inspired by the colours of the district: green for the Food area, pink for the Music area and light blue for the Arts area. Cold and delicate tones match the iconic orange colour without ever overpowering it. The three drivers are also identified by three different fonts: a bold and cheerful one for the Food area (Valizas), one with a vintage and electronic flavour for the Music area (Chakra Petch) and, finally, a more classic and graceful one that combines the contemporary soul with the one closest to the tradition of the Arts area (Beirut). The studio has drawn up a five-point manifesto that describes the entire project as a chameleon system, since, as a whole, it is adaptable, modular in terms of a future perspective, including through digital devices; as an Urban Trekking circuit, to discover the neighbourhood through unprecedented itineraries that involve the visitor in ways that are always new; as a talking construction site, because the intervention enhances the continuous evolution of the site with its construction areas and its different needs according to the concept of “meanwhile uses”; as a widespread agora, through the presence of places of outdoor conviviality; and finally as an identity accelerator, also thanks to some of its most important elements, such as the District Board, a place to inform and be informed. Within the extensive wayfinding and environmental graphic interventions, the studio then designed several physical elements that also follow the chromatic and visual logic of the entire system and are fundamental for the orientation of users and visitors. All the objects arranged along the pathway have different characteristics, dimensions and information depending on the user and the level of depth.
The graphic design intervention is therefore one of the building blocks of the broader project to make the site a permeable and dynamic space, a living place where people get around and meet with safety and hospitality.

Photo Gianpiero Peretti-Sharing Idea
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