QT8 may sound like the futuristic name of a machine or an indecipherable code, while its meaning is firmly rooted in history; in fact, it was created during the eighth edition of the Milan Triennale. This area was conceived as an experimental district and continues to be one of the best examples of urbanist developments during the post-World War II in Italy. It embodies the “concrete dream” of the architect Piero Bottoni and his quest for a stirring beauty that was able to create dialogues between spaces of both individual and collective freedom. QT8 and Mount “Stella” with their presences mark the northwestern landscape of Milan and they testify to how fruitful the union between urban design and landscape design can be; they constitute an attempt, partly successful, to counter the perpetuation of the suburban character of urban additions. Bottoni was moved by the intent to combine civic engagement with dreaming, in response to social needs with the ability to invent landscapes and places endowed with beauty and potential for meaning. The buildings he designs and constructs at QT8 are open to wide-ranging experimentation - typological, technological and constructive - while at the same time cooperating to configure a new part of the city: a "garden district." What urban planning project today considers that a part of it is home to homeless people or single mothers in need? Yet, it is not just an urban planning experiment designed on paper. You can still walking around those walls and gardens and be pervaded by the poetics of beauty and meaning that generated them. It has become a living entity made up of light and shadow, in which lies silent a strong identity that now struggles to overcome its loneliness with the rest of the city. You can perceive that a part of the whole is missing to make it feel closer to the citizens of Milan who should all enjoy and treasure it.