In Milan, the eyes and voices of immigrants, refugees and marginalized citizens take on a surprising form to interact with the public, telling people their stories. While drones are typically associated with surveillance, war and intrusion, here they become messengers in an attempt to cross cultural divides and encourage empathy.

Loro (Them), a live performance by New York-based, Poland-born artist Krzysztof Wodiczko, came to Italy for the first time on June 6-8, during Milan Photo Week, with support from non-profit public art organization More Art. The multimedia installation anthropomorphizes drones “to reclaim a broader conversation about technology’s relationship to humanity,” equipping them with screens that show only the eyes of people involved in the project. A megaphone-like mouth tells each person’s story as the drones fly at low altitude outside Milan’s Teatro Continuo Burri.

“Each drone represents a person, elaborating on the lived experience not only of immigration, but more generally of social and political marginalization, addressing highly topical issues such as cohabitation, citizenship, representation, and even hospitality. The title of the project Loro (Them) immediately emphasizes the distance that is created by those who are mistakenly considered different—highlighting the all too familiar ‘them’ vs. ‘us’ dichotomy. At the same time, the artist seeks to cancel this divisive space, putting audiences face to face, albeit virtually, with real stories and real individuals.”

For all their good intentions, the drones still have a bit of a disconcerting look to them, at least in the initial renderings, but they’re a tad less imposing in real life, as seen in this video by the Instytut Adama Mickiewicza. Whether there’s a disconnect between the stories of these so-called “invisible citizens” and the technology used to present them may depend on your personal view of drones. If you find them creepy, do you think that view would ease at all when they’re humanized like this?

Loro (Them) is just the latest thought-provoking project from Wodiczko, an internationally known artist, professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Design and former director of the Center for Advanced Visual Studies and of the Interrogative Design Group at MIT.

“Throughout his career, Wodiczko has been instrumental in combining new technologies with art. Working with still images, video and audio, Wodiczko has become famous throughout the world for his large-scale public screenings of iconic buildings and monuments. Since 1980 he has created more than 90 screenings worldwide, including “Abraham Lincoln: War Veteran Projection” in New York City in 2012 commissioned by More Art.”

Images of performance via Art Tribune

A series of abandoned subterranean spaces in Milan have been transformed into tiny living rooms, dining rooms, bedrooms and kitchens, complete with furniture and fixtures.

Designed by Italian artist Biancoshock, these small dwellings are rendered especially surreal thanks to bright colors and attention to detail. The project has a social dimension as well, inspired by the actual people forced to live in extreme spaces thanks to unfortunate circumstances, including the hundreds that live in the sewer systems of Romania or places like Las Vegas.

Whatever your own interpretation, the next time you pass a sewer grate, manhole cover or set of maintenance doors on the streets of Milan, it might be worth taking a closer look. More about the artist and his philosophy: “Ephemeralism has the purpose of producing works of art that have to exist briefly in space but limitlessly in time through the photography, the video and the media. He has realized more that 650 interventions in the streets of Italy, Croatia, Czech Republic, France, Germany, England, Hungary, Lithuania, Malesia, Malta, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Singapore, Slovak, Slovenia and Spain and he is not thinking about stopping.”

Sports stadiums can be contentious, particularly when located in the heart of a city, but this design works in various ways to reduce disruptions to urban fabric, slotting seamlessly into its surrounding context.

Designed by international architecture and engineering firm Arup, the AC Milan 48,000-seat soccer club stadium in Italy is wrapped in commercial (shops, bars, hotels and restaurants) programmatic elements that work with but also independently of sporting events. Additional public-purpose elements include rooftop decks, micro-parks and playground for children.

Reinforced with soundproofing and a plan to sink its base into the ground, adding these architectural buffers on all sides helps reduce noise pollution for blocks on all sides as well as providing street-level continuity for those walking and driving through the city. Mark Wilson compares it to a combination of historical fortifications and suburban shopping centers: “around the stadium’s heart, architects will build a castle-like perimeter of restaurants, a hotel, and a sports college. From the street, the stadium just looks like a block-wide mall.”

The stadium itself features a spectator-optimized design intended to provide the best view possible for all visitors as well as a removable roof to allow for play in various conditions.

There are many structures that arguably should stand out from their surroundings – civic buildings like city halls, for instance – but sports stadiums rarely look good in and of themselves, and far too frequently interrupt what is going on in the cities around them. Typically, “even the most beautifully designed stadiums are an eyesore. They’re sprawling moles protruding from the skin of an urban environment, distended to accommodate a wide footprint of seats low to the ground.”

Featuring 100,000 square feet of smog-filtering surface area, this structural facade will break down harmful oxides in sunlight to improve air quality all around it.

The building, designed by Italian firm Nemesi & Partners, is being created for an exposition in Milan themed around planet-friendly sustainable designs.

The amorphous and organic form is both a reference to trees and other types of air-purifying plants but also a way to provide a maximum amount of exposed surface.

Like a forest, this facade will cast complex shadows and provide shade in and around the building. Its form references both nature and man-made land art.

Rooftop solar panels tucked out of view will add a further but less-visible green dimension, generating electricity for the building below.

Skeptics of improbably green skyscraper concepts might want to take a moment of silence to appreciate the successful construction of these two beautiful buildings now nearly completion.

Designed by Stefano Boeri in Milan, Italy, the twin towers of the Bosco Verticale play host to nearly 1,000 trees, 5,000 shrubs and over 10,000 additional small plants.

The building was fully designed with its greenery in mind, including accommodations for irrigation, root systems, plant weights and wind loads within the city. This rich miniature ecosystem of plant life in turn helps filter the surrounding air, dampen urban noise and provide shade for residents. For its local environment, the building increases biodiversity and provides habitats for regional birds and insects.

From the designers: “The creation of a number of vertical forests in the city will be able to create a network of environmental corridors which will give life to the main parks in the city, bringing the green space of avenues and gardens and connecting various spaces of spontaneous vegetation growth. [This project] helps to build a micro-climate and to filter dust particles which are present in the urban environment. The diversity of the plants helps to create humidity, and absorb CO2 and dust, produces oxygen, protects people and houses from the suns rays and from acoustic pollution.”