The research aims to interpret the network of Milan municipal market halls, with a designoriented approach applied on different scales and with different viewpoints. This new interpretation of the network, tenacious yet weakened, is developed through the consistence of places and districts, structured by the movements and expectations of the inhabitants, and of buildings, read in their history, matter, and form. Precisely their double nature – at the same time of objects built for a place and in a place, and elements organized in a network - constitutes the interest towards the market halls and the key for their regeneration, likewise to the one suggested for other diffused services, such as libraries, civic and cultural centers. In this sense, as aimed by the Municipality, commercial activities and services can coexist within the same walls, which, once renewed, can re-define their form, welcoming and flexible spaces for human relationship, between public and private.