Project

Piazza Marinoni

Year

2014

Course

Architectural Design Lab

Professors

Riccardo Canella, Marco Canesi, Vittorio Garatti

Location

Tirano, Italy

The redesign at little scale of a public square in the north of Italy follows a urbanistic macroproject about infrastructural connections in a Italian alpine disadvantaged contest. Piazza Marinoni is located outside the historical walls of Tirano, on the other side of the river. It has at the bottom an obelisk, which commemorates the fallens of First World War. Now the area is mainly used as car parking and it is crossed by the main road, which deprives it from its potential value of square and public space as it was in the past. The intervention provides the pedestrianization of the main road, which leads to Basilica della Madonna, an important catholic church built in 1504, in the ealry year under Swiss control.

Taking off of the crossing road and creating underground a parking, big empty space is left. In the south a wooden walkable wall, with a little tower as lift point from the parking, hide a group of ‘60s building. The theatre is a “forma urbis” theatre where the scene inside is the city itself. It is located in front of the little garden and the obelisk and at ground floor it allows a passage towards them. Upstairs it becomes a panoramic terrace looking the mountain landscape. The new building of the library facing the square replaces a former disused one.

It is characterized by a barrel vault with little windows. On the right there is a little court, a usual Italian typology.