Milan: Presentation of Metropolix house

10 October 1998: in Minniti square, core of ‘the Island’ neighborhood, Metropolix was born. a squatted house and a real answer to housing problems of fifty students and student-workers. A new round in the path of gaining rights to house and self-organized social spaces within a city that seems to close itself into the perverted logics of its ‘masters’. One year after the squatting the project of Metropolix goes on and duplicates with the youth hostel. We offered a service that lacked in our city. More than two thousands people hung around there, they inter-crossed their experiences and knowledges giving life to an extraordinary social experiment and to a network of relations that has enriched both ourselves and the city of Milano as a whole. A political and social answer has been given to the emptiness and flattening of social conflict, which is being addressed towards more commercial and profit-oriented logics. 2 March ’00: without mediations or alternative proposals, the eviction came. Our project was a dangerous one, it was something to eliminate, the building had to be re-used in the frame of a totally different strategy and with different, higher profits, the neighborhood had to be canceled to make room for the City of Fashion. Our wealth and our plans can’t be stopped by nasty city council members, mayors with a sheriff’s behavior or ‘zealous’ civil servants. WE NEED A HOUSE TO GO AROUND THE WORLD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! We don’t have anything to hide, no secrets in our practices In public we squatted the building in Minniti square and in public we have announced and managed the eviction. In the same way, in the shining light of the sun, we already squatted another place on friday 17 ’00 INFO LINE: — 0039 (0) 338 4323945 www.ecn.org/metropolix mail to: metropolix [at] ecn [dot] org

Metropolix/Springstof