Let’s introduce the family Colombo
How is living in San Gimignano District
The family Colombo live in Milan, in San Gimignano District in Via dei Ciclamini 45. From home they can hear the ring of near S.S Patroni church bells. Elena and Angelo — the parents — met at the youth club when they were teenagers and they got married when they were 23 years old. The neighbourhood is a residential area where the majority of the inhabitants are elderly people or young couples with little children.
This place is characterized by some small green parks and lots of fitness areas. The church rises among other tall buildings around and the square is totally used as car parking. It is surrounded by an historical café, a hair stylist, a florist, a tattoo shop, the youth club and, not far from there, an abandoned gas station.
The week starts: at 7:00 o’clock the alarm rings. Elena wakes up, 5 minutes to go to the bathroom, then straight to the kitchen to make breakfast for her family. In 45 minutes she takes Sofia, a 11-year-old girl, and Elsa school bag — she loves Frozen — to go to school. Sofia is old enough to go by herself, as her classmates do, so Elena can bring her daughter to the corner and watch her reaching the school alone. After verifying that little Sofia arrived safe and sound, she takes the bus 58 to S. Ambrogio; there she works in a publishing house. She is looking forward to the opening of M4 so she’ll take half the time to reach her workplace. In the meanwhile, the father, Angelo, had just a coffee and took his 24 hours to go to work. He takes the tram number 14 and after half an hour he comes in the bank where he has been working for 30 years. Edoardo is older, this is his first year at the university. He is still at bed, on mondays the lesson starts at 11 a.m. so he can sleep longer. He chose Bicocca university, the farthest from home but the only one where he can study social services science. He loves really much this faculty because he walks to Primaticcio, where he takes M1 to Precotto, then tram number 7 for a total of one hour travel. Sofia, after school, goes to her grandmother Adele for lunch. After doing homework and watching tv she is ready for her dance class at 5 p.m. and Adele is really proud of her granddaughter.
The family meets again for dinner. Angelo cooks everyday, as his mother taught him when he was just a child. This is one of his biggest passion and he always wants to experiment new receipts. They tell each other about their day and the week goes by really fast with no big changes except on wednesdays: they always have pizza at dinner and then a film together, as a tradition.
Saturday morning: Edoardo doesn’t wake up before midday, the night before he came back home at half past 3 a.m. while the rest of the family is up from 9:00 o’clock. During the morning Sofia does her homeworks only because in this way she can go to the youth club in the afternoon. She loves to go there because that’s the meeting point where she and her friends can play together. Angelo and Elena split all the houseworks, in order to have a free sunny sunday. Elena cleans the whole house and Angelo goes to the supermarket to fill the fridge for the next week. Luckily the supermarket is really close to their place, he could walk for 5 minutes to reach it, but he prefers to go there by car. Using the car is not a problem, there’s no traffic except for the two main streets that connect the neighbourhood to the city centre. Lunch time and right after Edoardo has to take his sister to the youth club, where also he used to go when he was a child. Now he thinks it’s a place for losers, so he spends saturdays afternoon with his friends at the park in the neighbourhood. Finally the parents have time to spend together and to get ready for dinner with friends. Edoardo is not at home for dinner and night, his parents are always worried because he always need to take the metro to reach the city centre, there’s no place to go in the neighbourhood for youngs.
All the family, except Edoardo, goes to Mass on sunday mornings, in S.S. Patroni church. They can go on foot, even because the parking in front of the church is always full. Sofia, as the whole neighbourhood, would like to have a safe square instead of a parking, to have space to meet, to play and to relax with the community. Grandma Adele waits for the family for lunch and an afternoon together where she can tell some old stories to her grandchildren.
Adele has been living in this neighbourhood since she was born. Once this place was completely different: there were farmsteads and children playing all around and a net of people helping each other, an actual community. Now Arzaga is just the name of a street, but until the 1960s there was the farmhouse Arzaga, of ancient origin and characterized by a neo gothic style, quite unusual for this type of buildings. Another huge difference that grandma remembers is the number of streets: from 1937 until today it has been risen up exponentially. During the 1960s she saw the born of the church S.S. Patroni and at the same time the disappearance of the farmhouse Arzaga. Sofia loves listening to this story of changings of the place where she lives.
Adele’s favourite memory is about her childhood: her grandparents had a workshop, one of those with green clothes and fruit boxes on the street, vegetables wrapped into old newspapers and creased pieces of paper as register. She pretended to sell products as adults did and — when grandpa didn’t watch her — she stole nuts from a huge plastic bag. Adele used to go back inside only when her grandma called her and she smelled tomato sauce in the air. Staying by her grandparents she met all the kids of the building and they played at the market, using wood boxes to build stands to sell old objects and cards. With the earnings of the day they used to go to the milkman to buy tasty ice lollies and they were happy and satisfied.
Nowadays this neighbourhood has lost its identity: the community would like to participate to the life of the district but there is no place to meet each other except for the youth club and the church. As a result the community is limited to the religious sphere and it doesn’t include all the inhabitants. People there need a neutral space to rebuild the community and the identity that this place once had, who knows that one day the S.S Patroni square could become the new heart of the neighbourhood.
TEAM 4
Angelica Almogabar, Tugba Dilmen, Giulia Mauri, Licia Rocca, Camilla Valori
