Facilities, Landscape, City. To the origins of a missed meeting. Travelling around the new high-speed Naples-Afragola train station (original) (raw)
Related papers
2015
Deep changes in urban frameworks, challenge contemporary cities, where often, common spaces formerly central, risk an indissoluble physical degradation, due to processes of social marginalization. Architects are asked to face the developmental dynamics for spaces of anonymity, every day more numerous, working on previous attitudes as aggregation and relation junctions. Moving from the description of the design criteria that inform the rehabilitation for the ancient area of Corso Garibaldi in Naples, the paper introduces a critical thinking about the links between space’ performances and attitudes towards inclusivity. Urban and architectural solutions are privileged means in order to return to citizenship the right to public space, reaffirming the concept of common space as dwelling, residence of the community, with the creation of new social ties and the growth of local shared identities.
The Renovation of Italian Railway Stations: From the Journey to the Consumption of the Journey
Academic Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies
The article analyses the transformations that have affected Italian railway stations in recent decades. The first part deals with the history of the railway station and is devoted to understanding its functions as well as its social and symbolic meanings. The construction of railways had a significant impact on the urban form: it created new centralities and fractures and conditioned the development of the city. The railway station represented a novelty from an architectural point of view, being a space in which architectural and engineering knowledge merged. Because of their importance and monumentality, railway stations have been likened to cathedrals of modernity and movement and have been among the most important public spaces in the twentieth century. The second part of the article focuses on railway station renovation projects, in particular the «Grandi Stazioni» project, viewing it in the broader context of the profound changes in urban policies, which are increasingly orient...
Infrastructures as new opportunities for the design of urban relations in Eastern Naples.
Infrastructures generate intrinsic transformations of the territory. If on one hand they improve the accessibility generating processes of economical growth and spatial expansion, on the other, they represent barrier to material, perceptional and social continuity. Looking at the city at metropolitan scale infrastructures are terminal nodes of global trajectories, as well as, sometimes constrains to local communities development. Infrastructures, allowing the coexistence of different populations, are also both a lens to read rising conflicts between different powers and populations as well as a tool to redesign shared spaces. East Naples, for its characteristics, represents an interesting case study to understand these dynamics: a former industrial area, partially dismissed, now interested by traditional projects of renovation and, at the same time, spontaneous forces of change. Nevertheless the presence of the infrastructures still influences the process of redefining common spaces.
The recent launching in Italy of a number of large scale urban operations centered around High Speed Railway (HSR) stations has added a wealth of examples and themes to the overall European picture; these go to make up a global point of reference for other countries that are, in this period, undertaking the construction of their own HSR networks. Above and beyond the territorial questions often linked to the issue, further research investigating the architectural aspect of these operations would be highly relevant, but is rather lacking. Instead, we shall be focusing on current HSR stations in Italy, such as Turin Porta Susa, Florence Belfiore and Rome Tiburtina, and comparing them briefly, where necessary, with European case-studies, whilst directing our attention towards certain aspects that still need to be examined. A key element in past studies (Castells:2000; Harvey: 1989; Hall: 2002) is that contemporary railway operations should be assessed on a city-regional scale. Indeed, focusing on Italian HSR stations, which readapt existing railway stations to HSR use, the importance of the local scale suddenly emerges, since it is through these buildings that the urban residual, pre-existing conditions, due to the 19th and 20th century infrastructure, are now being integrated into larger Master Plans, in which the railway station acts as the primary integer of urban and architectural space. However, replacing these contemporary HSR stations within an architectural framework raises a major question at the district level, about the impact of these huge complexes on the ancient urban fabric and about their new role as urban mediators, also in terms of density and morphology. Finally, addressing specific factors in the design process, this paper aims to describe and illustrate the peculiar features through which HSR infrastructure today manages to transform itself from the urban separator that it was during the last century into an urban connector. This paper concludes by providing two main scenarios that might contribute to our understanding of the spatiality of these new HSR stations, and attempts to show that HSR stations may be seen as an interface, whose main qualities become those of exchange, adaptability and compatibility; this would call for a more complex association between flows and urban matter, focusing more on the relationships between objects than on the objects themselves.
INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE on CHANGING CITIES V, Corfu Island, Greece, 2022
Meolo is a small town in the Metropolitan City of Venice, crossed by the river of the same name. Its flat territory is located between the courses of the Piave and Sile rivers. The work we propose concerns the redevelopment of the central part of this town. The analysis carried out led to the finding that the space in front of the Town Hall was, and still is, inadequate in relation to the need for a centrality felt by the community. This space is insufficient to host the main recreational and meeting public functions. The purpose of this study is the formulation of hypotheses for a new definition of the central space close to the historic building that now houses the Town Hall. The historic square of Meolo was once the churchyard of St John the Baptist, a consecrated place that also housed burial sites far from the location of the current Town Hall. Throughout the Middle Ages and beyond, it has been a place of collective events and activities, including those of a non-sacred nature. Over the centuries, the churchyard has been built and the memory of this central space has been lost. Afterwards, the place of reference of the community was the open space not well defined at the foot of the Ponte dei Carri. The area was overlooked by the main historic buildings, seats of administrative and commercial activities, including Villa Folco (also known as Villa Dreina). In 1953, the Ponte dei Carri was demolished, and a section of the river buried. Arranged during the reconstruction phase following World War I, the area in front of the Town Hall remained a secondary square. Being originally part of a private villa, is not a real square in the perception of its inhabitants. It, however, constitutes today a valuable opportunity to redesign the lost unity of this historic town. The paper includes the results of students’ workshops developed in the framework of the courses on “Architectural and Urban Composition 2” taught on the master’s degree in Architectural Engineering at the Department of Civil, Environmental and Architectural Engineering of the University of Padua. The working method is based on the belief that the study of urban morphology and the history of the city are basic to face a design theme. The history is considered as an indispensable tool to know the deep reasons of the urban structure which is the memory and the image of the community. The methodology contemplates the urban form as a result of its spatial structure. Progressing from the study of how the area has evolved through time, students defined new proposals for the area that involved testing new building types.
PROCEEDINGS of the INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE on CHANGING CITIES IV Spatial, Design, Landscape & Socio-economic Dimensions, 2019
This work considers the small town of Quinto Vicentino located not far from Vicenza in the Veneto region, Italy, as a case study, formulating proposals for a new urban design focused on the historic piazza. The piazza of Quinto Vicentino is characterised by the presence of Villa Thiene whose architect was Andrea Palladio, and which has housed the town council (municipal government) since 1871. Villa Thiene and its presence forms the basis of the regeneration proposals. The intention is to enhance the value of the building and develop the tourism potential of the town. The villa in fact nowadays seems to have been forgotten, inside the piazza which unfortunately is used as vehicular thoroughfare and for parking. The idea is composed of remodelling in the style of traditional Italian piazzas characterised by the shape of a recognisable urban space around which lie the public buildings of the town. Both the classical and medieval piazza are recognised by the presence of volumes arranged hierarchically around the empty space of the piazza. The piazza is the urban fact around which the minor building development is distributed. The methodology looks at the town as a result of its spatial structure. More than political, social, and economic systems, reasons for its special nature can be found because of its constancy. The method adopted is based on studying the history of the place to understand the urban morphology of it. The physical specificity of the urban form is explored with the aim of elaborating a design process to reinforce the public space as a reference point for the community. Our work is the result of students’ workshops, developed in the framework of the course on “Architectural and Urban Composition 2” taught on the master’s degree in Architectural Engineering at the Department of Civil, Environmental, Architectural Engineering of the University of Padua. Our research has been carried on with a more general purpose that is to debate about the urban image, applying the theories and techniques of building design.
The city of Piacenza hosts a significant portion of newcomers compared to the number of residents. However, the lack of communication between the two is also straightforward in the urban context. In this regard, an abandoned place near to the train station of Piacenza has been chosen in order apply a tactical urbanism project whose primary aim is an improved social cohesion in Pia-cenza. High financial costs and yet unsatisfactory end products slow down many design projects and even cause the denial of them. However, employing tactical urbanism perspective, the project aims to foresee the success likelihood of a complete urban design project without requiring a significant budget. Preliminarily proposed idea is to provide a gathering space for the residents of Piacenza in a vacant space. By doing so, the project area has been analyzed and the project that responsive to the problems of the area is introduced in order to give a reference for further applications on a larger scale.
This graduate level course is centered around a week of fieldwork in the Italian city of Naples -one of the largest metropolitan areas in Europe and home to an estimated 3,000,000 people -exploring the interconnections between changing urban political economies and social structures (characterized by both a burgeoning middle class and rapidly growing migrant underclass) and the city's infrastructures (municipal water, solid waste, public housing and transportation). The fieldwork will explore the bold visions for municipal reforms alongside popular and media reports of spreading informality, political corruption and infrastructural breakdown -exploring both the mythology and empirical realities of what has been termed the "informal city " in relation to urban settlements and infrastructural arrangements (water, waste, and transportation). The course has both practical and theoretical components, involving both meetings with urban practitioners in Naples (urban planners, city officials, civil servants, utility company executives, social movement activists) as well as seminar-style discussions lectures led by Professor Björkman and Professor Rossi. Combining social scientific perspectives (from geography, planning, social theory, sociology and anthropology) with approaches from the technical and natural sciences (architecture, engineering, and environmental and sustainability studies), the course will focus on infrastructural challenges and contestations that have animated heated debates in city politics and in the broader public sphere in Naples in recent times.
Art on the threshold. Neapolitan metro stations in an international context
Il Capitale Culturale: Studies on the Value of Cultural Heritage, 2020
Artistic installations in metro subway stations can influence the daily use of public spaces. They are grafted into places that necessarily require, by those who use them, different ways of attention, between transits and moments of stasis. After a brief summary of the main international cases, this essay focuses on the presence of art works in Neapolitan subway stations, dwelling in particular on those cases with a significant integration between art and architecture and where the relationship between the city and its corresponding underground part is highlighted. In the past many works of public art were intended as monuments or as decorations. By contrast, the works taken into consideration here go beyond these definitions, just as their framing in a specific museum dimension is problematic. The art stations in Naples open new questions on public art and can be a starting point for new aesthetic and relational experiences. Le installazioni artistiche nelle stazioni metropolitane ...