Urban planning investigation, Boeri's version: "I'm not a builder."

"We are witnessing a formidable smear campaign" against Milan, "which, if it is currently experiencing a difficult transition, is because it has managed to establish itself as one of the most attractive international metropolises. I love this city. I am an architect, not a 'concrete developer.'" So wrote Stefano Boeri, involved in the urban planning investigation that has engulfed Milan, in a post on his Instagram profile.

According to the architect, "today we need a more incisive policy of redistribution, which Milan attracts and too often concentrates in restricted and exclusive spaces and environments," but "Italy does not need the demolition of a model, the Milanese one, of governing urban complexity."

"The 'Warning' I expressed in a message to the mayor of Milan, Giuseppe Sala, "was not a threat, but rather a serious alarm over the actions of the City's Landscape Commission, which continued to reject our 'Torre Botanica' project, citing reasons that had nothing to do with the Commission's assigned duties," the architect clarifies in a lengthy post regarding his involvement in the Milan prosecutor's office's major urban planning investigation, in which he is under investigation for alleged pressure to obtain a favorable opinion on his Pirellino-Torre Botanica project.

I would add that our project for Via Pirelli 39, after a year of meetings and heated discussions, was approved by the Commission only after the painful abandonment of the original idea of 'Torre Botanica' (an experimental and advanced architecture that I held dear and which I believed would have brought Milan significant international recognition) and the presentation of a substantially different project," Boeri further emphasizes.

The lengthy message opens with reference to the publication of private messages sent and received by the architect, which have been filed in the investigation in which he is under investigation for undue influence: "In recent days, I have been the target of a violent defamatory campaign, particularly due to the dissemination of a series of decontextualized fragments of my private messages, which were passed on to the media before being shared with my lawyers and myself. This is a regrettable situation, not new in Italy, which, in the wake of a media trial, makes those who, as in my case, are simply involved in a preliminary investigation, guilty. I remain convinced that the only venue for any judicial process should be the Court. For this reason, I have decided in recent days not to give statements or interviews, allowing my lawyers, out of respect for the work of the Judiciary, the time necessary to prepare a solid defense."