Does Jupiter have clouds?

The Bicocca is a district of the north-western suburbs of Milan, it has always been one of the industrial hearts of the city, however around 1980 Pirelli decided to gradually move its production abroad, so the municipality was forced to undertake a plan for the redevelopment of the neighborhood: thus began the LA GRANDE BICOCCA project. Basically, the municipality re-evaluated and gentrified the area by opening itself as the headquarters of numerous multinationals and building a large shopping center. As part of this process, a skatepark was inaugurated last summer. From the beginning it was a great attraction for the skaters community; the people who frequent the park are divided into two: the locals who live in the nearby areas and let’s say the others who occasionally arrive for skating in the afternoon.

The boys make this place:for many it is only a place to go where they feel safe and fully themselves, protected from the rest of the society that remains outside the gates of the skate park. Many live happily this isolation, others feel the fences like bars of a cage that force them to a marginal fixed place.

The skateboard is the center of everything, a lifeline and a perspective for many, an ideal on which this community is based, whic encompasses children aged 4 and up.

I have been living in Milan for 4 yeaes but I never felt so much at home as in the afternoons in Bicocca, doing this project is more what the boys gave me than what I gave them. It is a story you had to know.