Piazza Istria

Focal point of the neighbourhood of Sorgane, Piazza Istria was renovated following various founding principles, among which that of becoming the ultimate driving force for the urban re-qualification of the neighbourhood, with a role of spatial and relational centrality, as a hinge between the two residential complexes. The final objective is the overturning of the previous condition as an aesthetically unsolved emptiness, with the purpose of an organic, formally complete suture with the surrounding architectural environment. On the compositional level, the project pursues the criterium of consonance with the character of the place, assuming the adjacent volume of Leonardo Savioli’s building as a referential system both of the conceptual and geometrical premises, and of the measures and formal devices. The new Piazza is distributed according to two superposed plans planimetrically inscribed one inside the other, yet different from each other in terms of the position regarding the street-level, of their perimeter, and of the materials that constitute them. Only two materials were used, one natural and the other artificial. The two chosen materials are natural stone and coloured asphalt, the latter a new generation material, more technical and pragmatical. The first is used as a stone “carpet” which is set on the two minor sides in order to form, on the south side, a projecting roof-loggia, and to the north a bench, for its entire length, in accordance with a typological solution aimed at a figure of spatial synthesis, both functional and formal, in which the square, the architecture, furnishings, greenery and installations unite into a unitary sign-concept. Homogeneously paved in typical gray alberese stone, with great slabs laid as a regular grid, parallel on the narrower side, the square is articulated with subtle and rhythmed strips of white limestone, projected from the structural weave of Savioli’s residential building on the western side. Two new parallel rows of trees along the minor sides provide the square with an organic green system, useful for providing shade in large sections, but also to serve as an aesthetic backdrop of natural architecture, completed by a long evergreen hedge, divided by three crossings on the western side, and high enough to hide the car park behind. A cluster of 14 benches of varying sizes, placed under the new rows of trees, complete the furnishing of the square and provide a place for resting