© Andrés Jaque / Office for Political Innovation

Silvio Berlusconi’s contested political upgrowth resulted from architectural invention. Interiors, building, landscaping, and urban design were his main occupations from the late 1960s to the early 1990s. From 1968 on, as the owner of Edilnord Centri Residenziali, Berlusconi developed Milano 2, a 712,000 m² residential city located 10 minutes from the center of Milan. Presented as an alluring, inoffensive mix of rational architecture and vernacular embellishment, Milano 2 embodied a radical urbanism. Berlusconi’s last public appearance – on 2 June this year, ten days before he died – was a visit to Milano 2, where he had an ice-cream and took pride in his professional origins…[+]