Nomicosecittà Milano
Verdemangoni / Mangonigreen

When we asked Luca Mangoni to take us around for the last walk of Nomicosecittà Milano the images we had in our minds were those of the countless shows in which we saw him as a performer, as supergiovane(i.e. “super young”). Nevertheless in his relation with his city it has been possible for us to get to know “Mangoni off the stage”: this is the person who took us on a mid June Saturday from Parco Nord to Porta Volta ramparts. “Mangonigreen” has been a walk through a continuously changing Milan, a path through old and new stories, stories about the city or simply stories of life.
Parco Nord and Carroponte, evidences of an industrial past and of a present that hardly find their place. In the tale about Parco Nord merges the point of view of the Director, Riccardo Gini, with the memories of Mangoni as a child, who recalls the stories told by his parents about the fights promoted by the inhabitants of the surrounding neighborhoods to obtain that green lung.

Our exceptional guide took as then to the Bicocca area, recently redeveloped, to the old Villaggio Pirelli and to Collina dei Ciliegi (i.e. cherry trees hill). Via Koerner, were Mangoni grew up and part of his family still lives, is not far. The next stop in the “Mangonigreen” itinerary has been the Isola neighborhood and the visit to the temporary occupied news-agent shop by the photographer Lorenzo Tricoli and the Micamera association. We could not have avoided to walk through via Confalonieri, where the past of Stecca degli Artigiani is not really past and the future is represented by a new development that includes the Bosco Verticale (i.e. vertical wood) project; a future that is becoming real, it is becoming the present. This is the leitmotiv between the different areas crossed by the “Verdemangoni” walk, a tale of the city that was and the city that will be; in-between there is a heterogeneous set of practices, actors that are driving the change or are subjected to it or refuse it with the idea that a different future is possible.
This is the case of the Piano Terra (i.e. ground floor) space recently occupied by a group of activists right in front of Bosco Verticale, or of Giardini in Transito (i.e. gardens in transit), an association that recently obtained the management for a year only of a patch of grass in Via Montello. A continuously increasing group of people is devoting to a wide range of activities where a multistory garage should be built, together with the project for the new Feltrinelli building. The walk ended at S.E.M. - Società Escursionisti Milanesi – CAI Milano, historical branch of the Milanese alpine club located in a former custom house and supporter of Nomicosecittà Milano. The President, Laura Posani, has welcomed us with “verdeSEM”, a story gifted to the walkers and to Mangoni to explain the character and the role of hiking in Milan.

Luca Mangoni (1961). He attended Einstein high school with his schoolmate Elio. The two soon became friends. He then graduated in Architecture at Politecnico di Milano and after some years he opened his own practice. The friendship with Elio, frontman of the Elio e le Storie Tese band, brought Mangoni to the stage: starting with small and occasional parts at the beginning of the ’90s (he is therefore called the Eternal Excluded), he then got enough space for real performances. On the stage he became Supergiovane (i.e. superyoung) and il Farmacista (i.e. the chemist), he danced during El Pube and became Dottor Stramangone on occasional visit. Interpreter of a single cd containing a parody of In Te by Nek, the image guy is a fundamental member of Elio e le Storie Tese. Beloved by the public, he often diverts the attention from Elio (who often comments: “Mangoni is not able to do anything and everybody claps!”).