The confrontation between architecture and metropolitan territory represents the new frontier of contemporary research. Today the suburban scenario is an uncertain, fluid composite, subject to a series of transformations that can be not just opaque and elusive, but also violent and radical. In the Milanese hinterland the spread of shopping malls and office districts, congestion and the development of infrastructure and rapid evolution of residential geography coexist with cultivated fields and with the network of resurgences, irrigation ditches and country roads, producing surreal and at times dramatic effects. This landscape of many layers, and many significances, is the one most typical of our age. It is our territory: a mutable and still largely unknown context, marginal by definition and often culturally and politically subordinate to the city. In recent years the commune of Pioltello, an agricultural and industrial town on the outskirts of Milan, has tackled the problems and potentiality of its territory by pursuing an urban strategy characterized by architecture of high quality. The result is a series of exceptional works that, united in a common experience, reflect research of great interest into the virtues and excesses of sprawl, into the condition of the urbanized countryside and into the problems and resources of the landscape, furrowed by the great infrastructures of the third millennium. Alessandro Rocca (Genoa, 1959) is an architect who graduated at the University of Rome La Sapienza under Franco Purini. He is on the editorial staff of the architectural magazines Lotus International and Navigator. Since 2000 he has taught the course of architectural design at the first Faculty of Architecture of Milan Polytechnic. As a critic of architecture he keeps a close eye on developments in the contemporary project, the more advanced experimentation and reflection in the fields of architecture and city planning, the most significant realizations and the principal phenomena of urban transformation. On various occasions his research into specific themes has found expression in critical essays published by numerous Italian and foreign magazines, along with participations in seminars and congresses in Italy and abroad, conferences and university lectures. He is the author of several books, including La città dipinta - Genova '92 (Electa, 1991), Fiere e città (Triennale di Milano-Charta, 1997), Ian Ritchie (Federico Motta Editore, 1998), Educatorium a Utrecht, Rem Koolhaas (Alinea editrice, 1999), Atlante del Triennale (Triennale di Milano-Charta, 1999)and I limiti del museo (DAMS - Università di Bologna, 2000).