Asphalt is ubiquitous in Milan, it covers not only streets, but is used also to cover sidewalks and even squares. Its presence is so widespread, that it is a defining element of the image of Milan. While smaller urban centres can rely on stone pavements, in the case of Milan the use of asphalt has a series of advantages: it is cheap, easy to apply, it improves safety, it is silent and comfortable to move on, it reduces dust and mud in the city and contributes therefore to the creation of a healthy environment, it is easy to cut, replace, repair and can be recycled. Its materiality enables the smoothness of space as well as the horizontal condition of the ultimate Milanese public space: the street.

With the ubiquity of asphalt in Milan arises the opportunity to create an intervention in scale of the city. Since asphalt can be coloured using coloured inert materials or different dyes, the possibility arises to replace existing asphalt, by following the natural maintenance schedule, through a coloured asphalt. This way a street would relate to its quarter and both would be recognisable at first glance. The colour of the asphalt would have to change from area to area, this way the asphalt would help to strengthen the identity of each quarter. By following a coherent procedure and by taking advantage of Milan’s radio centric layout, one street after the other, a new kind of urban way finding system would appear. A feature in scale of the city, which no other place in the world would possess.