part III_pp.208-271

MUNICIPIO SQUARE - NAPLES: A. SIZA AND E. SOUTO DE MOURA PROJECT
Bruna Di Palma
Department of Urban Design and Planning, University of Naples “Federico II” (ITALY)
[email protected]
Abstract
The Neapolitan urban port area interpretation proposed by Alvaro Siza Vieira and
Edoardo Souto De Moura in their design for the Municipio station is an interesting
point of view for the theoretical discussion about the development of the urban port
area and it represents a practical example of working on this ticklish part of the city.
Municipio square has a strategic role in the city of Naples: first for its monumental
and representative image, then for urban mobility, actually for what concerns the
reconstruction of the urban form evolution and particularly for the city border near the
sea, thanks to the new archaeological findings of the ancient port near the Castel
Nuovo fosse.
Line 1 and 6 interchanges of the Neapolitan underground will connect Municipio
station to the whole city and the port; thanks to its closeness to the Beverello quay,
the Angioino quay, and the station of the harbour, it should be renamed Municipio –
Porto station. In this work, all the questions are tackled together by a method that
could be defined archaeological for its revealing and holding, because it combines
stratigrafically different stream of traffic, archaeologies and monuments belonging to
various city times, mixed integrated facilities and function with the main goal of a
durable public vitality of the city. An idea of infrastructural project as city reconfiguration, a really public use of urban history, a reading of the portual area as a
part of the city are all together in the general structure of this work.
The city history will be projected towards the future excavating in the urban past; in a
general redevelopment area, the design of planes, the excavations and incisions will
connect the contemporary port with the ancient rearwarder one, overruling the break
that is usually placed between the port area and the city, creating, on the other hand,
continuity, both of identity and of landscape.
Keywords: Urban port, infrastructure, archaeology.
INTRODUCTION
Within the international debate on planning and urban redevelopment processes, the
theme of the relationship between the seaport space and the urban space gets the
point of the contemporary complex necessity to combine the conservation needs with
the development ones.
A complex, but practical occasion to explore this question is that one offered by the
urban port area of Naples (Fig. 1). This part of the town “ha seguito all’unisono
l’evolversi del processo di costruzione storica della città, rappresentandone, come in
un gioco di reciproci riflessi, l’immagine specchiata nelle acque” [1] (Fig. 2). Even
now, this role of the area is confirmed and it may be defined as an index of the
overall urban transformations. As evidence of this, and to confirm the strategic role of
the area there are a lot of recent initiatives and under construction projects that
involve the city when it has just stretched out toward the sea.
In particular the monumental area of the Neapolitan port, on which the attention is
drawn to as a case study, is returning to participate in the urban transformation,
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covering a major rule, especially thanks to the Alvaro Siza Vieira and Edoardo Souto
De Moura project, under construction, for Municipio square.
Fig. 1 - Overall view of the Neapolitan urban port area
Fig. 2 - Antonio JolI (sec. XVIII), Veduta del porto di Napoli
PORT AND CITY RELATION. EVOLUTION AND INTERPRETATION
Naples has always been a port city, but with the passage of time, its relathionship
with the sea has been gradually changing according to the economic – expansive
nature of the needs that the city has had in its original formation and development
between the arc of its gulf on the Mediterranean sea and the arc of its hill territory.
“Per molti secoli il Porto ha rappresentato l’ingresso privilegiato alla città, il luogo
d’incontro per eccellenza tra genti, merci e linguaggi diversi. Grande piazza
sull’acqua, con i lunghi pontili protesi come braccia di pietra tra le onde, questa parte
urbana di “limite” ha dominato l’iconografia storica partenopea. Tant’è che è proprio
dal mare che viene raffigurata Napoli nella bellissima Tavola Strozzi (Fig. 3), la prima
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attendibile rappresentazione della struttura urbana” [2]. The prevailing longitudinal
urban development, est – west, along the coastal arch, represented in the 1465 view
of Naples, known just as the Tavola Strozzi, is accompanied by the strong
transversal penetration of the “molo che, dall’interno della costruzione della città
s’inoltra nell’acqua, […] secondo una “misura” che proviene dal vuoto su cui si
fronteggiano città murata, colle e Castel Nuovo” [3]. A transversality characterized by
the vitality of the so called via del molo (Fig. 4). From the farthest point of the dock,
this via del molo leads directly and in a decided way to the heart of the city itself,
offering a fascinating view to the castle on the hill, Castel Sant’Elmo, bounded on the
west side by the huge Castel Nuovo and on the east side by the historical city, but,
above all, it had a fundamental role as public space with a strong identity within the
city. In this area along the via del molo, in the stretched out empty space between
architecture representative of the history of this part of the city, today we recognize
the original layout of Piazza Municipio. With the passage of the time, however, the
place of the relationship between the city and the sea, the interface between the
urban space and port space, loses more and more the natural permeability. The
separation takes place simultaneously with the specialization of the port functions
and the general sectorial characterization of the various part of the city so that they
lose cohesion and unity. The construction of the arteries and east – west coastal
infrastructure (via Cristoforo Colombo and via Nuova Marina) conclusively put an end
to any kind of hope about the recovery of relationship between the city and the sea
(Fig. 5). Carlos Martì Aris states that “il ponte, o per estensione, le opere
infrastrutturali, si converte in elemento fondamentale della struttura del territorio,
poiché garantisce la mobilità delle persone e delle merci, e la connessione tra le
parti. Questo fatto si scontra, tuttavia, con la tendenza delle infrastrutture a
trasformarsi in un sistema indipendente, dotato di una logica e un funzionamento
autonomi, che fanno di esse un oggetto isolato e incapace di stabilire un dialogo
efficace con il territorio in cui sono inserite” [4]. This trend was decisive for the
decline of the relationship between Naples and its sea, but it has been further
strengthened by the subsequent disuse of certain port facilities located along the
coast. This creates a long strip of territory, a terrain vague at the foot of a hard – built
curtain that separates the city from the sea making it all the more legitimate the
metaphor of Anna Maria Ortese for wich Il mare non bagna Napoli.
The great need for action on this Neapolitan urban fringe emerges repeatedly in
studies and researches on the design opportunities offered by the Neapolitan
territory. In 1987, in the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the foundation of the
Faculty of Architecture, some projects were drawn in Naples by architects such as
Alvaro Siza, Aldo Rossi, Carlo Aymonino (Fig. 6), Vittorio Gregotti and others;
various projects have been collected in the book Progetti per Napoli edited by G.
Alisio, A. Izzo and R. Amirante. Also in 1991, on the occasion of the Venice Biennale,
Salvatore Bisogni (Fig. 7) and Gianugo Polesello developed their project on the
urban port of Naples. In both these cases, the connection port – city is summarized in
the transverse connection between the angioino dock, Piazza Municipio with its
Castel Nuovo and the hill with its Castel Sant’Elmo.
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Fig. 3 – Unknown (1465), La flotta aragonese ritorna dalla battaglia di Ischia il 6 luglio
1465 (the so called Tavola Strozzi), Capodimonte Museum, Naples
Fig.4 - Antonio JolI (XVIII sec.), Napoli dal molo, (particular),
Fig. 5 - View of the urban port area after the construction
of the east – west coastal infrastructure.
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Fig. 6 - Carlo Aymonino (1987), working sketch “ Da S. Martino al mare”, Naples
Fig. 7 – Salvatore Bisogni (1991), working sketch, Venice Biennale
RENEWAL STRATEGIES AND ACTIONS
About ten years ago the refurbishment of the port returned to the center of the debate
on urban planning in Naples. In particular, since 2004, when the Company Nausicaa
was formed, composed by the Port Authority of Naples, the Municipality of Naples
and the Campania Region. This company had to overcome the port functional
specificity to drive the integrated development of the port area of the city and the first
action taken was to hold an international design competition with the aim of
upgrading the monumental area of the Neapolitan port. The center of the request of
the two – stage competition was the theme of the necessary coexistence, along this
longitudinal strip, between the working harbor and the city; the competition was won
by the group led by the French Michel Euvè. “Abbiamo approfondito questo tema
concentrando l' intervento sulla linea di confine fra porto e città. […] Esserci collocati
sulla linea di confine era un modo per consentire al porto di continuare a essere
operativo. […] Il nostro progetto ha trasformato la linea di separazione fra città e
porto in una zona filtro, in una "filtering line" (Fig. 8). […] Sulla sua copertura, quasi in
continuità con la via Nuova Marina, è stata progettata una lunga passeggiata aperta
sul porto e interconnessa con la galleria che collega la stazione marittima con la
stazione della metropolitana di piazza del Municipio di Alvaro Siza ed Eduardo Souto
de Mura” [5] (Fig. 9). Therefore a project aware of the difficulties arising from the
coexistence of different functions and partecipation of many and various institutions
involved, respectful of initiatives with wich it is connected, but also a project that is
still having a complicated process of development, so that nothing concrete has yet
been undertaken. The desired result from the competition was to provide a
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development mainly longitudinal of the project masterplan, running parallel to the arc
of the Gulf. The project, which instead is now in progress at a single point along the
whole arc of the port area offers a transversal interpretation of the connection
between the port and the city. This is the Municipio station, interchange station
between line 1 and 6 of the Naples metro. Although it is aimed for a punctual
connection, its cross-cutting strategy, intended as an initiative on this delicate urban
part, to be repeated in several places along its length to reconnect various urban
parts of the city, is an alternative mode to intervention. The development of the port
of Naples was still at the center of the Municipality strategies, when it was decided,
between 2009 and 2011, to participate as subject leader to territorial cooperation
program URBACT II, in which the thematic network CTUR (Cruise Traffic and Urban
Regeneration) has seen Naples and its port Authority in comparison with other
European and Extraeuropean cities and port authotities (Alicante, Dublin, Helsinki,
Matosinhos, Rhodes, Rostock, Trieste, Varna, Douro and Leixoes Port Authority,
Instanbul). In the cruise activity, the program saw an opportunity to the development
of the waterfront, to the resolution of the tensions that exist between the urban and
the port functions, but also to respond to the expectation of people about quality life
and satisfaction proposal in terms of public spaces. “Il progetto CTUR fa riferimento
allo sviluppo crocieristico come opportunità per il recupero del patrimonio
architettonico - urbano/portuale e lo sviluppo economico e sociale delle città di mare,
in coerenza con una corretta “rigenerazione urbana” nell’approccio integrato” [6].
Partecipation in this program, in addition to having stimulated, by comparison, a
creative debate giving rise to new ideas on the development of these areas, has also
allowed the definition of Local Action Plans (LAP): “progetti strutturati, integrati,
caratterizzati da una elevata flessibilità […] un coerente mix di operazioni già attivate
e di ipotesi di nuovi interventi” [7].
Fig. 8 – Michel Euvè (2005), overall view of the filtering line
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Fig. 9 – Michel Euvè (2005), site plan of the Neapolitan urban
port area redevelopment project
INFRASTRUCTURAL AND ARCHAEOLOGICAL RELATION
One of the strategies to renew the connection of the city with its port is the
improvement and increase of physical connections and of transports; within the
range of more or less recent actions regarding the area of the Neapolitan urban port,
the project for the Municipio square, with all the implications that has had in its
implementation phase, is the one on which focus the attention because of it is a
particularly interesting case. From the nineties onwards, through the definition of the
One Hundred Station Plan (1994), the Municipality has focused on the underground
network construction and on the new station realization in strategic points of the city
to address the general development of the city. An urban development in line with the
objectives and guidelines of the Transit Oriented Development (TOD), a term
introduced by Peter Calthorpe to indicate the transit oriented urban development that
aims to create, in the station areas of influence, the conditions for a high functional
mix, with high values of use intensity, and characteristics of good urban quality and
liveability. “L’innovazione più significativa della metropolitana è di carattere sociale,
dal momento che ha attuato un rapido collegamento tra le parti urbane, innescando
una proficua simbiosi tra le aree di più antica stratificazione storica con le aree di più
recente edificazione, ancora prive di identità monumentale” [8]. The Municipio station
design, behind the Angioino dock and lateral to the Castel Nuovo, is part of the plan
for the nodes of the urban metro network provided by the municipality intent.
Together with the surfacing space settlement, the project takes form as an
opportunity to solve a series of critical points of this central part of the city: the
gradual public space erasure in the square and the creation of a space – junction for
cars and public transport; the loss of the possibility of pedestrian crossing space,
starting from the pier to get to the Palazzo San Giacomo, on the opposite side and
Municipality seat, non providing a direct link between urban public space and port;
the loss of benefits enjoyment of the moat empty near the Castel Nuovo, used for a
long time with features that are not compatible with the historic value of the
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monument, but as car parking. Then, in general, the continuity of space and identity
that had characterized this area during its construction years has been slowly lost. As
was the case for other projects of the subway station in Naples, also in the Municipio
square, to the difficulty of having to connect to an horizontal complexity,
corresponding to the area on the surface, is added the difficulty of having to insinuate
between the history layers and therefore having to compare also with a vertical
complexity of the stratification given by the archaeological finds discovery unearthed
during the preliminary excavations (Fig.10). These excavations have allowed to find
the greek-roman dock and three boats (Fig.11) dating to the first century AD and in
excellent condition, thereby filling some gaps in knowledge on the city evolution and
in particular, on the progress of the coastline and areas immediately behind it. In a
different phase of the project, the location of the station in this particular point of the
city and the metro line passage in this area, would have to take into account, the fact
that an high archaeological potential may be present in the subsurface. Instead, the
work continued with progressive reconsideration of the basic design set by Siza and
Souto De Moura (Fig 12), in order to update it each time when the subsurface of
Naples, more than ten meters deep, restored treasures, problems or obstacles to get
around. About the Municipio square works, Francesco Venezia put forward very
categorically: “è questo il momento drammatico: quando si crea la “separazione” che
io definisco “fatale” tra il mondo del costruire e il mondo delle rovine che hanno
sempre nutrito la costruzione, divenendo così l’archeologia nemica dell’architettura e
della città, insidia inarginabile per l’architettura” [9]. However, the complexity of this
type of design challenges should be approached with a different basic theory and the
archaeologist Daniele Manacorda states equally convinced: “la ricerca archeologica
può convivere con l’uso degli spazi urbani, senza che la città debba bloccarsi” [10].
Although the discovery of archaeological remains has not helped to speed up the
implementation, and to improve the intervention sustainability both in economic field
and in terms of good quality life, but it has been very important in the reconstruction
of the urban form evolution of this part of the city. In addition to the greek – roman
ships, the crenellated wall that surrounded the Castel Nuovo (shown in the table
Strozzi, but the existence of which had never been verified), the base of the circular
Incoronata tower, another piece of the ancient fortification of the castle and even
many remains of houses with fine wall painting were founded. “Ciò che ci colpisce
non è tanto la “quantità di tempo” trascorso dalla sua fondazione, quanto piuttosto il
fatto che percepiamo, quasi fisicamente, la complessità del suo tempo interno:
ovvero la molteplicità di quei tempi differenti che i resti materiali, intrecciati fra di loro
descrivono, richiamano, testimoniano” [11].
To anyone who points out the problems and controversies that are accompanied the
works, Siza says “tutto ciò che ha a che fare con l’archeologia non è un progetto
terminato”. Certainly the complexity to which the project has been submitted is
leading to the creation of a new part of the city, which enter as profound teaching in
the design of the link between the new and the old, the infrastructural and the
archaeological. It is an example of designing building for contemporary life in accord
to a public use of history in historical context. Inevitably, “qualsiasi progetto
d’intervento su un sito archeologico nel centro di una città è un potenziale progetto
archeologico, e qualsiasi campagna archeologica è un progetto urbano” [12]: the
words of the Greek architect Yannis Tsiomis find a further confirmation in the
proposed layout of the square and in the construction of the new station. Through the
“uso della memoria come strumento, come materiale del progetto” [13], the project is
designed and it develops by successive layers and spatial use, revealing
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archaeological practice at the base of the design process. This practice does not
occur through the work of uncovering the archaeologies, but through their integration
with the new architecture, the surrounding city and landscape, the infrastructural
needs. The final harmony of the project will be in the contaminated balance reached
and not in the original. The Portuguese architects give back the unitary characteristic
of transversal axis that connects the city to the sea, to the empty space of Municipio
square, in perspective with the hill. The spatial continuity of the new Municipio square
is also guaranteed thanks to the traffic flows reorganization, to the expansion and the
new fluidity of the pedestrian area (Fig. 13). The project synthesizes some horizontal
connections through few and clear planimetric signs: two extended plans mark the
main historical elevations through which this urban part was formed, and also the
flow system, which always characterizes the project of a station, as well as that of a
square, accompanied by the overlapping plans. Using the height difference between
the existing square and that of the moat around the castle, the project redefines the
monumental public space on the surface, at the nineteenth century city level, through
a wide tree-lined street between Palazzo San Giacomo and via Marina. As a terrace,
this continuous plan stops itself longitudinally near the Castel Nuovo moat and
through the creation of an overlooking to the archaeological floor below it. The
entrance to the station is located in the low archaeological floor and through an
excavation, it goes under the square surface, identifying another level, the atriummezzanine. At that level passengers arrive from the underground metro lines 1 and
6. Restaurants, shops and exhibition spaces for the ancient boat and the
archaeological ruins are put together, but above all, here there is the direct
connection with the Molo Angioino and the Maritime Station. This level is also the
protagonist of the connection between the new project and the archeological findings:
they can be seen through the glass gallery, parallel to the Caste Nuovo fortification,
which is directly connected with the archaeological area. In this way, everyone, in the
station or in the square, is directly involved in the view of the surrounding
monuments.The projected connection between the maritime station and the subway
station (Fig. 14) allows to create the link between the space of the port and the space
of the city and also the boundary between this two spaces will be not more well
identified, but rather, topped with strength and simplicity at the same time, becoming
the space of permeability and crossing (Fig. 15-16). In the Municipio Square, the new
infrastructural project allows, certainly, to connect different point in the city space, but
the particular feature of this case is also to create a temporal connection between the
different times of the urban port. So, in the lower level, the Greek-roman port is
connected to the contemporary one, while, in the surface, the new Municipio square
refers to what it was several years ago, when the ancient “via del molo,” full of people
and fascinating representative space of the city, was described as magical by
travelers like Goethe and Dumas. “Pensare un’architettura nel tempo, nella lunga
durata, è in realtà una condizione indispensabile per offrire un’effettiva sostenibilità
dell’architettura: non a caso, i francesi parlano a questo proposito di “development
durable”, sviluppo durevole, legando il concetto di sostenibilità a quello di durata
temporale” [14].
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Fig. 10 – Aereal view of excavation
Fig. 11 – Aereal view of three boats and wooden stakes of the pier
Fig. 12 – A. Siza and E. Souto De Moura, working sketch
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Fig. 13 – Overall view of the model
Fig. 14 – Overall view of the model, from the port to the hill
Fig. 15 – Plan at the Municipio square level and longitudinal section
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Fig. 16 – Municipio station, mezzanine level plan
REFERENCES
[1]
[2]
[3]
[4]
[5]
[6]
[7]
[8]
[9]
[10]
[11]
[12]
[13]
[14]
Gravagnuolo B. (1994), Napoli. Il porto e la città. Storia e progetti, Edizioni Scientifiche Italiane,
Naples, Italy.
Ibid.
Bisogni S. Polesello G. (1993), L’architettura del limite, Clean Edizioni, Napoli, Italy.
Martì Aris C. (2007), La centina e l’arco, Christian Marinotti Edizioni, Milan, Italy.
Euvè M. (2010), Il waterfront e le regole di cui la città ha bisogno, La Repubblica, 10 dicembre
2010, sez. Napoli.
Programma Europeo URBACT II, Rete Tematica CTUR (2011), Traffico crocieristico e
Rigenerazione Urbana. Report finale e guida alle Buone pratiche
Ibid.
Gravagnuolo B. (2005) Idee e cose. Bilancio sulle nuove infrastrutture in Campania, allegato a
Casabella 737.
Venezia F. (2011), Che cosa è l’architettura, Electa - Collana Architetti e Architetture, Milan, Italy
Manacorda D. (2008), Lezioni di archeologia, Editori Laterza, Rome - Bari, Italy.
Ricci A. (2006), Attorno alla nuda pietra, Donzelli Editore, Roma, Italy.
Tsiomis Y. (2002), Progetto urbano e progetto archeologico in Franco C. Massarente A.
Trisciuoglio M., L’antico e il nuovo, UTET Libreria, Torino, Italy.
Alain Croiset P. La lezione di Rafael Moneo in Moneo R. (2005), Costruire nel costruito, a cura di
[]Bonino M., Umberto Allemandi & Co., Torino, Italy.
Ibid.
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HYBRID SPACEFRONT. AN INDUSTRIAL BUILDING AS THRESHOLD
BETWEEN WATER AND THE CITY
Francesca Avitabile
Department of Urban Design and Planning, University of Naples “Federico II” (ITALY)
[email protected]
Abstract
In the Water Cities, huge “machine-buildings” of the port have always been involved
in dynamics of change, as the loss of function, that transforms the monofunctional
specialization spaces into meaningless and underused voids.
Reasoning on the possibility of their reuse in the contemporary city, means to
interpret these voids as overlapped spaces, areas of transition, extended thresholds
between the port and the city.
Considering the port of Naples as an activated area, means working on port-city
conflict, balancing the thrust of the city and the introversion of the port, starting from a
new reading of the empty masses of industrial buildings as new architectural
reference points capable to generate a new plot of relationships.
The imposing profile of Silos Granaries identifies the terminal to the east of a linear
sequence of remarkable pre-existing buildings, located along the coastline of
Monumental Port of Naples. The possibility of the reuse of the Silos becomes a
chance to think about a gradual transformation through alternative interventions (or
temporally differentiated) with the aim to facilitate the permeability of urban life in the
port, working on the potential of the grain cell as an element of morphological, visual,
and hearing peculiarity, to engaging facilities to enhance its formal expressiveness.
Through architectural interventions of partial release, subtraction, articulation, the aim
is to build a new system of spaces "other”, differently “graduated” (indoors / half open
/ open) that interact with roads, buildings, green system. These transitional hybrid
spaces, joined with the network of consolidated public spaces, change the
relationship between the city and the marginal areas dramatically separated,
overcoming also the preconception of the separation between inside/outside and
turning suspended spaces into spaces of threshold, able to act as urban nodes.
Keywords: water’s edge, transitional spaces, urban hybrid, urban design, reuse.
THE CHANCE OF REUSE
Masses of industrial buildings and sequences of unusually dilated spaces are pieces
of a port-system that arranges the different materials through purely functional logics.
These functions represent the permanence of industrial, commercial activities gone
into crisis, leaving disused and underused spaces, but in the past have featured
whole pieces of the city.
Despite the "hard" specific nature of the port, these spaces are not element of
stability, but their distinctive feature lies in the ability of their configuration to evolve
and adapt itself, to be re-thought and re-defined by grafting a strong dialectic
between pre-existences and new elements. The port is like “a living organism, which
generates and includes the trace of many lives” [1].
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Reasoning on the possibility of reuse of this "machine-buildings" and their areas of
relevance in the contemporary city, means interpreting these "voids" as overlapped
spaces, areas of transition, extended thresholds between the port and the city.
Means recognizing these elements as landmark of the port and the city landscape at
the same time, but also means recovering the memory and identity of a significant
part of the complex history of a city-port1.
They take on a key role in the transformation process of the port areas as privileged
places with untapped potential where the port-city conflict can find a new balance.
"What is now abandoned, but has caused developments in the past and still today
remark the morphological arrangement, is recognized as a regenerative potential" [2],
recovering in this way, a dimension of collective memory in terms absolutely
contemporary.
Naples. Waiting for a change
Cities like Naples, completely built, dense, compact, fixed in their form and content,
have to look at the port as a system with unimaginable opportunities of
transformation and adaptation to the recent needs, new questions of space and new
qualities [3]. This transformation can start from a new reading of the abandoned
harbour architectures as centralities from which trigger regeneration of the entire
surrounding urban tissue and capable to generate a new plot of relationship.
Considering the port of Naples as a fertile area of transformation means working on
the conflict between conservation of historic-cultural values and economics interests,
between public and private interest, balancing the thrust of the city and the
introversion of the port. Is often absent a necessary sensitivity arising from a real
understanding of the role of these buildings that could provide for the maintenance of
the most significant tracks, even within spaces that take on a new meaning given by
new uses. In many cases, moreover, programs and projects of redevelopment,
conversion and re-use of the port of Naples, are nowadays at a waiting point , due to
the inefficiency of the planning tools and the clash of different competences on the
territory. Therefore it is necessary to operate into the meshes of an imaginary future,
partially planned, whose overall view of interventions is not yet completely
understood. For this cause we cannot reasoning, as done in the past [4], on the
exclusive opening of the port to the city (although this is important), but have to
operate on the physical and functional integration between the two landscapes,
following a logic design of new physical and economic relationships that provides
both the port and the city opportunities to enjoy its different qualities.
A LINE OF RESEARCH ON URBAN DESIGN. HYBRID WATER/SPACE FRONT
The research 2 conducted within the Doctorate in Urban Design and Planning on the
case study of Silos Granaries proposes to operate with a dynamic process, which
offers alternative answers (with different times of implementation) to avoid an overall
re-design of the Port of Naples, fixed in a specific time and space, but carefully trying
1
The Mediterranean Foundation (international non-profit organization of social utility, born in 1994 in
Naples) reports «We differentiate between “cities with a port” and the “city-port”. In the former, the
ports were built out of necessity, while in the latter they were created according to the nature of the
site; here they are a form of mediation or completion, in the other, the beginning or the centre».
2
Subject of Francesca Avitabile’ doctoral thesis in progress “Hybrid/Transitional spaces. Forms of
expansion of public spaces”.
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to trace elements to be converted (such as Silos Granaries), capable to provoke
continuous variations in the surroundings through a punctual intervention with an
urban vocation. A possible design intervention strategy that “insert” itself inside
harbor structures to “identify an internal principle of regeneration, mingling and local
hybridization” [5].
The site.
The port of Naples is characterized by strong contrasts among its different entities
but, at the same time, it appears monotonous, with no centre or system of spatial
orientation. At first it was a natural basin, then landing place and at least with the
expansion to the east (towards the middle of the XV century) it became a “fortified
waterfront” of the city (“Wall Front”), more than two kilometres long. The eastern area
of the monumental port, where the Silos Granaries is situated, is affected by the
failed attempt to create a "green lung in a neighbourhood that was completely devoid
of it” [6], a sort of green barrier (“Green Front”) between the urban tissue and the port
facility, named Villa del Popolo, that was deleted by the creation of the railway line
linking the station to the harbor due to its expansion. Expanded on the water and cut
off from the continuity of the city (through the demolition of the Carmine fort and the
construction of Via Marina), the harbor’s structure undergoes a deep and definitive
breaking point that radically changes the landscape and the entire urban context,
developing an introversion of specialized enclosures and beginning to spread the first
port architectures. The current configuration of the area is therefore the result of the
changes described and of the deterioration suffered in recent years, as well as the
result of years of misuse, neglect and decay. The different typologies of uses
followed one each other and the continuous overlay of discontinuity, returns a
disorganized collection (“Puzzle Land”), to which must be added the influence of the
future projects in progress for the Stazione Garibaldi (Dominique Perrault), Piazza
Mercato, Parco della Marinella (Aldo Loris Rossi) (Fig.1).
Fig.1 – Overlap the main stages of transformation of the area3
3
Design by the author.
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Despite the profound break with the city behind, inside the port remains a sequence
of open spaces distributed in continuity with the historical spaces of the city (Fig.2),
although assuming nature and forms radically different, and they are broken by the
frequency of a longitudinal system of natural and artificial barriers (Fig.3), which take
place in the 150 meters that separate the "city" from the sea, at the same time, they
represent an obstacle and a rhythm to this passage. In this space the materials of
urban history, architecture and industrial infrastructures, coexist without dialoguing,
as a juxtaposition and overlapping of elements, huge introverted masses and waiting
spaces, areas of interference and transition.
Fig.2 – Sequence of open spaces4
4
Design by the author.
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Fig.3 – Sequence of barriers5
The Silos as an element of morphological peculiarity
Built in 1913 of reinforced concrete 6, the imposing profile of the Silos Granaries
(Fig.4), identifies the terminal to the east of linear sequence of remarkable preexisting buildings, located along the coastline of monumental harbor of Naples, as a
potential points of reference for a new longitudinal narration within the port.
Fig.4 – The imposing profile of the Silos on Calata Villa di Popolo7
5
Design by the author.
The Silos is partially destroyed during the Second World War in 1943, rebuilt in 1948 and finally
expanded in 1986 through the construction of steel silos.
7
Photo edit by the author.
6
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It occupies more than half of the quay (150 meters long for and approximately 3600
square meters) in a position of absolute dominance of the skyline of the port and the
city: “a magnificent monolithic building of reinforced concrete, and a pier into the sea
also of reinforced concrete, which sticks out into the water in front of it” [7].
As emblem of machine-buildings, the geometric purity8 of the Silos gives it a
monumental effect, as confirmed by Aldo Rossi, a willingness to shape that
sometimes exceeds the functional requirements: "I'm thinking about the lighthouse
and large conical chimneys of the castle of Sintra in Portugal, silos and chimneys.
This latter are the beautiful buildings of our time, even if it is not true that they do not
repeated patterns of architecture, this is a nonsense of modern criticism and
modernist. Mankind has always built with aesthetics intention ... ".
A further proof of this, is the arrangement of the harbour buildings on the quay of Villa
del Popolo. It is configured as a sort of "spindle" stretched to the confluence of the
railroad tracks (now largely removed) and in which the buildings, arranged in two
rows, are oriented to give the shoulders to each other and the front towards the sea.
It follows that “the internal road gains a "urban" sense in governing the different
buildings that flank it, although of different scale as in the case of the Silo” [8]. The
compression in the two buildings fronts opens to a longitudinal view that frames the
two most important landscape landmarks: Sant' Elmo Castle and the Vesuvius
(Fig.5). So it is clear that the position occupied by the Silos, not only the fact of just
being there, rather to be “in relation to” something, becomes crucial to the future
transformation of the port.
Fig.5 – To the left 1887 9, to the right 2011
8
The myth of the geometric purity of the industrial architectures is one of the principles on which it is
based architectural theory of Le Corbusier, detectable in some important steps, opening and closing,
the book Vers une architecture (1923)
9
Images from Amirante et al. (1993).
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«Que faire avec un silo? 10»
The possibility of the reuse of the Silos is functional to the planned relocation of the
goods traffic in bulk11. This relocation becomes a chance to think about a gradual
transformation in the use of the silos, obtaining an architecture able to survive to the
functional changes through alternative interventions (or temporally differentiated)
ranging from simple aesthetic fruition, as the recognition of the symbolic and
monumental character of the silo, to its most radical transformation in order to
become active part of the continuity of urban places. The enhancement of the silos
must not be frozen in time but rather placed into a changing environment. It should
also recognize the underlying system of relationships, with the sea, the city and the
landscape, to facilitate the interaction of different urban uses, by measuring the
reasons of the harbor landscape and industrial heritage12 through a respectful
integration of differences rather than simple assimilation between urban space and
harbor space. The idea is to use the silo as a filter between the passenger area of
the port and the shipbuilding area (Fig.6), with the aim to facilitate the permeability of
urban life in the harbor, working on the potential of the grain cell as an element of
morphological, visual, and hearing peculiarity, to engaging facilities to enhance its
formal expressiveness (Fig.7).
Fig.6 – Transformative vision of the Silos13
10
Title of an interesting article written by Jacques Lecours on the journal Continuité, (Number 96,
Spring 2003, p. 25-28) that deals with experimental hypotheses made to put the Silo n. 5 of the Port of
Montreal in value. The case study is extremely interesting referring to the case of Naples.
11
The dismission of Silos Granaries according to the P.O.T. (Triennial Operational Plan) 2011-2013,
of the Port Authority of Naples, provides the possibility of relocation of goods traffic in bulk in the Torre
Annunziata's harbor.
12
The notion of industrial heritage has replaced industrial archaeology, to emphasize the purpose of a
compatible architectural reuse.
13
Design by the author.
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Fig.7 – Transformative vision of the Silos14
At the same time it is necessary to work on the spaces around the building, residual
fragments that "show a vocation to be treated as public spaces to form a material and
perceptive continuum between inside and outside by using the fertile tool (...) of
urban design, the relational space, to rethink the voids between the factories” [9].
So the first section of the concrete silo (mostly rebuilt after the Second World War)
could exploit the special acoustic diffusion cells to accommodate a variety of
exhibitions functions, in close relation to the extension of the front space outside. The
second section of the silo could host functions related to the creation of seafront (in
the basement) while at the higher levels, to the memory of the site and its
contemporary interpretation, which reproduces the cycle of grain. The steel silos
become innovative spaces of exposition and observation towers of the entire city.
They are in relation to the possibility of preserving the function of the shipyards in the
surroundings, and adding to this function some workshops for training, allowing to
interpret them as elements of a city-port, introducing an uncommon mixité in these
areas of specialization, in order to recognize the single parts to be re-interpreted,
redrawing a significant portion of the city (Fig.8).
Fig.8 – The potential of the grain cell in section15
14
15
Design by the author.
Design by the author.
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The Silos as threshold between water and the city
The urban and architectural solution (Fig.9) look at the great void, which opens onto
the side elevation of the Silo, as an element of interaction/integration with it, in order
to create an “extrovert architecture which aspires to a direct and more involved
relation with the public” [10]. Its extension becomes a building expansion and an
interior longitudinal crossing: it clears the ground attack (allowing the view of the
sea), going into the ground, and re-emerges on the cover, through an
interpenetration of spaces and the empty cells, to define a physical/visual relationship
with the outside. The seafront is the terminal path to the sea that allows to enjoy the
spaces where the coexistence of the harbor machine and the city is evident, like in
the walking path that slopes toward the water and continues along the pier where the
large towers of landing stand out.
The architectural intervention expresses itself through partial release, subtraction,
articulation, but also de-structuring and overlaps, pursuing the aim to build a new
system of spaces "other”. Those “in-between” [11] spaces, derive their strategic value
in the condition of “ambiguity” which characterizes them, overcoming the
preconception of the separation between inside / outside, empting other buildings /
areas which have lost their meanings and consolidated functions and revise the
traditional approach focused on a clear separation between public and private
spaces. The architecture of those spaces is an architecture of connections, of
physical and perceptual relations, able to include different levels and scales of
intervention. The result is a sequence of open spaces at different “graduations”
(indoors / half open / open), hybrid spaces of transition that interact with roads,
buildings, green system, integrating with the network of consolidated public spaces
changing the relationship between the traditional city and the port dramatically
separated.
Fig.9 – The architectural solutions16
16
Design by the author.
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CONCLUSIONS
The aim of this research project is to generates a chain reaction that involves entire
urban tracks through a sequence of open spaces linked to cultural spaces, or other
hypothetic 'key areas', to give them meaning according to changing needs of the
contemporary city, a sense that goes beyond the specific place. As network’s node,
the silos become the protagonist of the thesis story through a path that extends from
the architectural scale to an urban one (Fig.10).
Fig.10 – The urban scale of the project
The idea is to create architectonic relationships between spaces, rather than finite
spaces, related to the ground, the site and the urban context, transforming the silo
into a landscape with different topographies accessible and open to the public from
various directions.
“The architecture of hybridization, the fluent merging of constituent parts into an
endlessly variable whole, amounts to the organization of continuous difference,
resulting in structures that are scale-less, subject to evolution, expansion, inversion
and other contortions and manipulations. Free to assume different identities,
architecture becomes endless” [11].
REFERENCES
[1]
[2]
[3]
[4]
[5]
[6]
[7]
Nerli F. (2005), Prefazione in Jouve P., Napoli –cose di porto, Mazzotta, Napoli
Miano P., Certosino E., Di Iorio M., Avitabile F., Esposito E., Aquilar G. (2011), Una linea di
ricerca del progetto urbano: l’architettura delle connessioni, in atti del convegno
1°Congresso(internazionale Rete Vitruvio - Il progetto di architettura fra didattica e ricerca, Poliba
Press, Bari
Dausero E., Giaimo C., Spaziante A. (2001), Se i vuoti si riempiono. Aree industriali
dismesse:temi e ricerche, Alinea, Firenze
(1992) Napoli Architettura e Città, 3°Seminario Internazionale di progettazione 1991, [La Buona
Stampa, Ercolano
Zanni F. (2011), L’ibrido urbano. Ipotesi di concettualizzazione, in Territorio 56, Franco Angeli,
pp. 96- 98
Alisio G. (1980), Napoli e il risanamento, ESI, Napoli, p.277
Moschitti C. (1917), Il porto di Napoli - cenno storico, Razzi, Napoli, p.87
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[8] Amirante R., Bruni F., Santangelo M.R. (1993), Il porto, Electa, Napoli
[9]
Massarente A., (2005), Da archeologia a patrimonio industriale, in Costruire in laterizio n.105,
Maggio/Giugno
[10] Aymonino A., Mosco V. P. (2006), Spazi pubblici contemporanei. Architettura a volume zero,
Skira, Milano
[11] Gausa M. (2003), In between in The metapolis dictionary of advanced architecture. City,
Technology and Society. Actar, Barcellona
[12] Van Berkel B. (1999), Move, Goose Press, Netherlands
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MODERN RUINS ON THE WATER’S EDGE: FROM THE OLD HARBOUR
HERITAGE TOWARDS NEW URBAN-PORT LANDSCAPES
Giorgia Aquilar
Department of Urban Design and Planning, University of Naples “Federico II” (ITALY)
[email protected]
Abstract
In the water's edge cities, the large-scale artifacts of the port industry have always
been involved - with increasing frequency - in the dynamics of change, shifting or
loss of function, which transform places of production into abandoned spaces,
portions of territory lacking of use and meaning.
Reflecting upon the genesis mechanisms of these “modern ruins” - and their possible
reuse in the contemporary city - means tending towards two strategic objectives: the
reworking on what has already been compromised through time, and the quest for
architectural and urban actions in which the project investigates itself on how not to
produce further "waste” in the delicate territory of the urban port. At the same time,
the reconverting of the historical heritage of water-related work turns towards matters
of identity, caught in the "unstable" balance between persistence and change. The
massive "machine-buildings" of industrial archaeology, which currently define a net of
underused spaces which characterize seaports landscape, become new potential
sites for port-city integration. In this perspective, water - as a liquid palimsest contains within itself the unstable characters of an “in-between” land, and the system
of the derelict factories occupies a strategic role as the built border between sea and
land. The case-study of the General Stores in the Port of Naples, seeks to elaborate
a sort of "tentative" strategy for the cities on water based on a system of "hotspots"
by re-using and reclaining old industrial buildings to revitalize city centres. In the
panorama of cities on water, the specificity of the neapolitan context stands largely in
the peculiar position of the waterfront: the port area is directly inside the city centre, it
is an active territory, where it is necessary to balance the pressures of city and the
introversion of the port: lending to house what has no place elsewhere, an
unprecedented mixité can be introduced in these areas of specialization. Through a
strategy of future scenarios it has been possible to experiment on design techniques
that focuse on the projective capacity of the planning. Following the changing identity
of places and recognizing the parts to be re-interpreted, it is possible to open up
chances of transformation for wide and significant portions of both city and port.
Keywords: Harbour heritage, derelict industrial buildings, port identity.
1. WATER AND INDUSTRIAL HERITAGE: DYNAMIC IDENTITY BETWEEN
PERSISTENCE AND CHANGE
"Will one day the shells of derelict factories (...) be able to capture the imagination of
tourists as the Roman ruins?" [1]
In the urban debate of the latter years, the relation between port-industrial heritage
and the presence of water is crucial and topical, as demonstrated by the significant
increase in the number of seminars, exhibitions and publications on the theme. The
issues concerning the delicate contact between preexisting industrial structures and
the reorganization of urban-port settlements are not innovative in the field of design
theory and research, as the reference to the metaphor of the big "building-machine" BDC, vol. 12, 1/2012 – ISSN: 1121-2918
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intended as large-scale derelict containers of harbour industry - is not new in
architecture. In fact this logic is driven by the productive performance of 19th century
industrial sites. The passenger's ships and sea cargo required suitable transport's
infrastructure that could easily receive goods and then distribute them around the
city. Docks, railways and highways constructed the planometric organization of these
sites. In addition, large containers, warehouses, and sheds were built to maintain the
intensity and the highly efficient productivity of the site. Today, even though most of
the large infrastructural elements were exchanged by modern transport facilities,
traces of large parcels of land are still evident, expecting an urban intervention.
Nevertheless, we are now witnessing the re-proposing of a design practice - working
on the industrial archaeology of the harbour system - as a strategy for both city and
port. The historic quays, piers and warehouses have become the emblematic places
for a new urban waterfronts, as strategic disposals for enhancing city-port interfaces.
Following the abandonment of traditional port activities, new cultural, educational and
touristic functions invest these spaces endowed with strong identities. However, it
should be interesting to reflect upon the pertinence of a model of the development of
a "wholly" urban waterfront: the choice of the maintenance of active port functions in
the heart of the city at the city-port interface opens new prospects in terms of projects
with a high added value for both realities. The working hypothesis that has been
developed focuses on the study of the ways in which port areas can be transformed,
at least partially, into urbans area, while retaining their role as infrastructural
machines. This way, the territorial dimension related to the strengthening of
infrastructural relations with rear-port areas binds to the architectural dimension of
port fabrics. Through the elimination of incompatible uses and the introduction of new
functions, some big "machine-buildings" of the port industry, which currently define a
system of abandoned and underused spaces, become new potential sites for both
city and port. The potential integration of port functions and urban spaces opens
plenty of questions. As a starting point, it should be interesting to wonder: how can
the continuity - both of landscape and of identity - be assured between the port
territory, an industrial and technical space, and the city?
Space, time and water. The fourth dimension of the urban ports
The reclamation and re-evalutation of disused industrial and port structures assumes
a strategic role for the whole urban development process. In this perspective, the
presence of water results in an increase in the value and potential for the reuse of the
productive heritage, becoming a powerful incentive in the redesign of these spaces.
The occasion gains even further significance when these abandoned structures are
located close to the city centre. In this way, they are suitable to house "what has no
place elsewhere", introducing an unprecedented mixitè in these areas of
specialization. Those processes, described by Rem Koolhaas as "selective
abandonment" [2], nourish the changing identity of places and recognize the parts to
redefine, opening up the possibility of redesigning significant portions of the city. The
space deriving from the dismission of the large containers of water-related work,
becomes a complex field on whose perimeter thickens the multitude of formal
experiences of the city and the dialectical tension between its different rules of order.
As a result, the attention is focused on the possible architectural and urban strategies
able to put in place the projective capacity of the design, working on scenarios of
alternative uses, tending to the maximum flexibility achievable. Through non-finished
buildings, which appear deliberately incomplete, architecture can follow its hybrid and
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unstable vocation, and "learn how to decay" [3]. By this point of view, the specificity
of port areas - differing from the territories of margin between urban areas - is linked
to the interpretation of the "anarchy of water which disdains the notion of form" [4].
Fig. 1. Consequently, "the liquid palimpsest should be read as a different ground from
which to draw living rules and procedures, but also as an intrinsic condition for the
instability of a middle territory" [5].
The image of the ship: the prosthetic vocation of port-industrial architecture
The step forward - in the hypothesis of working on the heritage of water-related work
as a strategy for port areas development - concerns the architectural choises in
terms of language and metodology of intervention. The peculiarity of port
warehouses and other maritime structures can be described as a sort of "prosthetic
vocation". The former functioning of these machines makes it possible to look at
them as complex infrastructures which grow by adding parts, each one with its own
logics and consequential form: an "assemblage" that recalls somehow the image of
the ship. In this optics, intervening on these structures with processes of addition,
partial demolition and superimposition, it is possible to preserve the identity and
update the image and use at the same time, to make them the dynamic landmarks in
the monumental contemporarity of port areas. The transformation processes, that
involve single architectural bodies or whole urban parts, invest these "parasitic"
strategies of a kind of responsibility that goes beyond the urban and architectural
issues in spatial terms: they are not only design tools but also conceptual
mechanisms able to act directly on the character of the physical realities which are
involved. As a result, deeper issues related to the ambiguity of the principle of
identity, may be investigated. That dilemma expresses, in metaphysical terms, the
question of whether persistence of original identity, was effective for an entity whose
parts have been transformed over time. The city and its waterfront, parasitized in
their buildings and tissues, undergoes also profound subversions, recalling the ship
of Theseus which components have been replaced with other ones - identical or
similar - until all parts have been changed. The paradox faces a double question: has
the ship of Theseus - completely replaced in its single parts, but at the same time
maintaining its original position in space - remained the same? And if another ship
was rebuilt in a different place - but using the original pieces of the first one, with their
authenticity in terms of material and age - is it yet the ship of Theseus, or a different
entity? Therefore, it is interesting to rethink the relation between parts and whole and reinterpret the changes, whether they involve mutilations and additions - in light
of the impossibility to establish a scientifically exact boundary between the amount of
"substance" that is licit or illicit to remove or add. Perhaps the true identity is built in
the change, as the real ship of Theseus, which is constantly renewed with new wood
to avoid its sinking.
Fig. 1 - Scheme of evolution of the western coastline in the Port of Naples
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2. "MODERN RUINS" IN THE PORT OF NAPLES: THE CASE OF THE
GENERAL STORES BUILDING
Fig. 2. In the panorama of cities on water, the specificity of the Neapolitan context
stands largely in the peculiar position of the waterfront: the port area is located
directly inside the city centre. Here the harbour is an active territory, where it is
necessary to balance the pressures of city and the introversion of the port. In Naples,
the port enters the urban dynamics through complex internal dialectics of continuity
and discontinuity: the existing fences of monofunctional specialization can be
combined with new urban areas of interconnection at different levels.
A double system along the cosatine: parallel lines and cross-connections
In fact, the sea line performs as a rigorous line of integrity which establishes a series
of parallel lines that grow deeper into the urban fabric: the shoreline, the artificial soil
with the linear sequence of port warehouses, the deep cut drawn by the
infrasctructure of via Marina, and then the "buffering zone" of the so called
"downtown districts", dividing the port areas from the historic centre. In doing so,
these lines have great emphasis on the city's north-south patterns of movement and
growth. Moreover, because the site is the city's edge, it is extremely difficult to
activate the seafront as a multi-programmatic site, which may become a node in the
city's sequential events. This is to say, that usually most of urban sequences are
charged by intensities and densities embedded within their urban surroundings. On
the potential linear system - parallel to the coastline - a second system of crossconnections is superimposed, recombining the broken relations between city and
port. In order to counter the fragmentation and separation characterizing the areas on
the water's edge, a strategic way of action shoud recombine this double system into
a unique net. This way, the big port-machines could become the hotspots for city-port
integration. In this sense, what should cities like Naples do when they reach their
open and fragmented edge?
Interscalar strategies: the system of port-industrial building machines
"Without claiming to redraw the entire city, some architectures are often sufficient to
give new direction to the meaning of the whole, but the consciousness of the
belonging to the flow of stratification is crucial to the constitution of the new
possibilities" [6].
Fig. 2. The choice to refer to a single building as a strategic element within a vast and
complex area of the port of Naples, requires some clarifications. First, about the
reasons for the focusing on a punctual area, almost wholly built and limited, despite
its wideness. In this perspective, the decision to intervene on one of the modern ruins
of the port is part of an overall strategy which identifies, recognizes and selects the
large derelict containers, as fragments of a recent past to be "ferried" in the future.
The General Stores can be incorporated into a system of significant pre-existences
(which includes other emergencies such as the Silos Granaries, the Fish Market,
etc..) located along the coast line in a linear sequence. The need to rediscover lost or
hidden transversalities, through the axes of penetration from the city to the port and
viceversa (for example, the main cuts coming from Piazza Municipio and Piazza
Borsa towards the sea) is accompanied by the intention to strengthen the linear
dimension inherent the territories on the water's edge. In this setting, the building
takes the value of the element to be read in its repetition: repeated intervals can be
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risen to words in the story of the city. The urban sequence which extends along the
coast becomes extremely significant in relation to the dialogue that is determined
among the parallel bands. It follows a reading of the multiscalar relations between the
different levels of the city and its generic structure. In the sequence, the individual
building acquires the role of "superblock" [7], in which the typological value is closely
related to its position as element of discontinuity, as an intermittence in the urban
fabric. The large-size abandoned container becomes a potential value in the
organization of the physical space. Returning to the koolhaasian interpretation, the
"bigness" [8] that characterizes these machines of the port industry, holds together
the concepts of scale and size, working on the intermediate dimension between
building and urban fabric. In this perspective, it would be interesting to quote
Frampton's concept of Megaform, as "an urban element which due to its size, content
and direction has the capacity to inflect the surrounding landscape and give its
particular orientation and identity" [9]. In other words, the intervention through large
forms, is pursued in order to unify the city's rapture and isolated objects. The result is
a large continuous horizontal form which is closely connected to the ground. This
form, as Frampton argues, has the potential of accommodating large and massive
mix use programs, which are all under the roof of one large building. In effect, the
building becomes part of the topographic surrounding, and thus turns into a landmark
of place-form. The great urban building, has a dual charge, centrifugal and
centripetal: it acts as the incubator and catalyst for new flows, becoming an
intentional "out of scale". Freed from the traditional linear sequence, the different
design scales interact on a plurality of levels (and times), allowing to be reassembled
into a single object. This raises a fundamental question: how to move the meanings
of the General Stores building, in order to transform it into a staple part in the broader
redesign of the port central area?
Fig. 2 - The comparision of the General Stores to the scale of the ships
The General Stores building: gateway towards the sea
Fig. 3. The General Stores building - preserved as an identifying element of the port
waterfront - is involved by the dynamics of transformation, which act on limited
additions and demolitions, as urban incubator that can provide strategic solutions
adaptable to possible future scenarios. The working in an area that presents intrinsic
characters overlap and which is still in a position to accommodate other layers,
makes the vicissitudes of the building site - linked to the lack of available space on
the ground for the development of port functions, and the need to leave open areas
for reasons of visual perception and physical connection between the city and the
view port - the reasons to test these mechanisms of growth of the city through
changes that affect its architecture, working in, on, between them, in a continuous
dialectic between complete and incomplete. The warehouse occupies a position of
great strategic importance for city and port: its scale, not only as a physical size, but
as the territorial dimension of landmark from the sea towards the inner settlement
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and vice versa, relies the former industrial machine a role that goes beyond the
original intended use now abandoned. These considerations introduce the issues of
"waste", derelict spaces, buildings that have lost their function acting "as a hermit
crab in search of an empty shell" [10]. These abandoned territories may be able to
house new centralities through re-signification processes.
Looking back briefly to the main steps of the site evolution, it is possible to recognize
some basic data for the formulation of the problem. The troubled recent history of the
building go through a determinant fase in 2004, when the Nausicaa society established through an agreement between the Municipality, the Province, the
Region and the Port Authority - announces a competition for the monumental
waterfront of the port of Naples. The competition notice involves the complete
demolition of the General Stores, replaced by a parking lot at ground level. The
winning project, designed by the team led by Michel Euvè, provides a new building suspended over via Marina, just a few feet away from the old warehouse - which has
the greatest limit to obstruct the view of the sea from the city in some key points. In
2008, the Superintendency bans the demolition of the structure, while preserving the
building designed by architect Marcello Canino in the Fifties. In 2009, a compromise
is finally reached: to save about the 80% of the the building, and to eliminate a
portion thus opening a passage towards the sea. But even this project was
abandoned, and today the Superintendent is considering various proposals by the
winning team for the transformation and expansion of the building. A major turning
point occurs with the Triennial Operative Plan (POT), which temporarily modifies the
provisions of the Port Plan: it provides the extension of the Piliero quay, to ensure the
berthing of three ships perpendicular to the coastline. Even the design performed for
the preparation of mooring points misses practical implementation, and the new
dispositions provide the possibility to increase the number of dockings through a
provisional system of pontoons. Moreover, assigning the quay for a mixed traffic of
goods and passengers - and in particular with the intention of strengthening the
mooring system for the ferries to the big islands - it is expected to extend the artificial
platform towards the sea.
Fig. 3 - Proposal for the a unified basement level, connecting the undergroud floor of
the General Stores, the commercial strip of the Filtering Line designed by Michel
Euvè, and the Subway Station in Piazza Municipio by Alvaro Siza
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Scenarios. Desinging the changing identity of the General Stores building
"The ideal would be that the probability of a structure's life corresponded to its
probability in use, but the latter is difficult to predict. It would be more feasible to built
something composing of two orders of parts: one in the long term and the other
easily replaceable. Or, besides asking an architect to show how a building will look
when it is busy, one might ask him to remould it for some different use, or how it will
appear in a state of decay" [11].
On the Piliero basin, a logistical problem concerning the deficiency of available
surfaces for the conduct of port functions, becomes an opportunity to set up a
strategy of urban transformation that develops through "scenarios". Those scenarios
are meant as temporally progressive stages, in which each one has a suitable level
of durability and autonomy with respect to the eventual subsequent phases, so to be
considered accomplished even on its own. This way, it has been possible to
experiment on design techniques that focuse on the projective capacity of the
planning. Following the changing identity of places and recognizing the parts to be
re-interpreted, it is possible to open up chances of transformation for wide and
significant portions of both city and port. The purpose of the urban project - about
reducing the production of waste - leads to the concept of flexible and reusable
design: architectures able to survive their changes of use, function, and role, through
self-regulation and re-signification. The striving for an architecture that is able to
anticipate the expected dereliction of port structures, not only means to measure the
interventions in terms of size, but to think about an architectural "language", returning
to wonder about the design logics of the city and its waterfront. Therefore, the
dynamics of scenarios is primarily determined by port logistics and envisaged
changes. The scenarios foreshadow the different configurations and face the attempt
to experiment solutions able to deal with the constant need for space. In the case of
the General Stores, this available space may be found inside the building itself - or
on top of it - avoiding the realization of additional artificial platforms, as provided by
the Plan. In this perspective, the working through alternative projections means to
involve in the design strategy the natural cycle of life and death of buildings. As a
consequence, the decay generates new possibilities, leading to re-read the
dereliction as the production of new strategic areas, interpreting the dismission as a
great opportunity of transformation. Proceeding through sequential scenarios, this
design logic allows to investigate the relations between design and time dimension,
deepening the role assumed by the dereliction in the contemporary city, particularly
in water's edge areas.
Fig. 5. Scenario 0: Naples 2012. It is meant as the permanence of the current
logistical situation, with the disposition of ships parallel to the coastline. For this
reason, the first step is a minimal intervention, which involves only the inner space of
the building. Recognizing strong identity value to the big concrete structures that
allow free and flexible organization within their wide spans, the intervention takes into
account that part of the building in which these characters are less clear, as already
undermined by internal divisions for functional nature. The portion between the first
three spans from the main front shows an internal configuration - articulated through
intermediate floors and vertical connections - that makes the original structure
illegible. The removing of these added elements, opens the interior to a completely
new space, lending it to house a connecting vertical structure, able to deal with the
contemporary monumentality and functionally suited to rise to the role of physical
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connection between sea and city. Through the new "chasm" inside the building, it is
possible to intervene on the logistics system in a decisive way for the separation of
the flows of passengers and goods, towards and from ships. In fact, since the
passengers transit may develop inside the building itself, it is possible to preserve the
current movement of trucks - which run around the building to get to the docks - and
avoid pedestrian crossings on their way. This is granted by the connection with the
basement of the Canino's building, which in turn becomes linked with the
underground level of the Subway Station designed by Alvaro Siza underneath the
street level of Piazza Municipio. The building itself becomes the place of crossing,
rediscovering the city's subterranean heights in a mechanism of interaction between
layers.
Fig. 5 - Proposal for the General Stores building - Scenario 0
Fig. 6. Scenario I: Naples 2022. The current condition of parallelism between the
Canino's building and the volumes of the ships which occupy the loading bay of
Piliero, represents a value of identity which is determinant in the recognizability of a
consolidated image, particularly in relation to the extremely important position that
the building assumes for the Maritime Station's square. Nevertheless - by assuming
the implemention of the plan provisions, which include the disposition of moorings
perpendicular to the coastline - it is possible to elaborate a proposal that, far from
being a defined architectural solution, reinterprets the building as flows exchanger.
But this proposal - which implies some transformations in terms of logistics and
organization of the port-machine - should deal with further considerations. While the
forecasts of the Port Plan highligh the need to increase the entering and exiting ships
flows through the extension of the quay (so as to allow a greater number of
moorings), at the same time the requirements of the POT took account of the
economic burden and logistical complications related to the construction of the new
platform, proposing the provision of temporary dockings by pontoons. These
observations lead to the proposal of "lifting up" a portion of the sea-front of the
building, allowing the passage of trucks underneath the building itself.
Fig. 6 - Proposal for the General Stores building - Scenario I
Fig. 7. Scenario II: Naples 2032. The last scenario envisages a possible
reconstruction of the previous phases into a single intervention. A matter of
technological-functional nature - closely linked to the dynamics of naval sectors becomes an opportunity to engage transformations that make the building able to
accommodate this growth. Assuming future scenarios in which the ships are involved
by significant dimensional increases, the building itself may grow in height,
discovering an unusual wide-angle view from the roof. The modeling of a new roofsurface - that rises and folds - defines new available spaces underneath it and new
views on top. Through these calibrated additions, the flow of passengers from ships
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lands directly on the roof - which house the new port functions - slopes down through
the volume, and finally discovers the underground level (even to reach the Subway
Station of Piazza Municipio) or reconnect to the Maritime Station's square on the
street level. A possible - and desirable - change of function within the building, could
introduce a mixitè between port functions and those related to a maritime,
archeological or contemporary art museum, together with further touristic and social
activities - would involve the entire volume of the building, suitable to become the
true gateway to the city from the sea and the islands.
Fig. 6 - Proposal for the General Stores - Scenario II
3. TOWARDS A TENTATIVE THEORY FOR CITIES ON WATER
"The dialectics between determining space, the presence of its boundaries and the
continuous accumulation of matter (architecture and humanity) project these realities
towards scenarios where the suspended areas awaiting definition, marginalised or
trapped between two definitions represent an area of exchange: neutral territories.
(...) The palimpsest becomes an active surface capable of accommodating temporary
programmes and on-going changes to promote the diversification that has always
represented the meaning of urbanity as well as of landscape" [12].
The strain towards a vision of urban development that is not necessarily
comprehensive and unifying - but acting on parts, through deliberate connections and
separations - becomes the occasion for setting up a "tentative strategy" for water's
edge cities.
Fig. 7. Far from proposing an abstract reversal of the current urban settlement, the
"new" city may be read "as the intensification of the existing one" [13], reinterpreting
the waterfront as the projection of the city itself.
Fig. 7 - Proposal for the General Stores: the double view towards the city and the sea
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REFERENCES
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Lynch K. (1990), ibidem.
Brodskij J (1992), Watermark, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, New York, NY, USA.
Marini S. (2010), Nuove terre. Architetture e paesaggi dello scarto, Quodlibet, Macerata,182.
Gregotti V. (1993), La città visibile, Einaudi, Torino, 78.
Colquhoun A. (1971), "The Superblock", Essays in Architectural Criticism: Modern Architecture
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Koolhaas R. (1995), S., M., L., XL., 010 Publishers, Rotterdam, The Netherlands.
Frampton K. (1999), The Megaform as Urban Landscape, University of Michigan, A. Alfred
Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning, USA.
Koolhaas R. (2005), Junkspace. Per un ripensamento radicale dello spazio urbano, Quodlibet,
Macerata.
Lynch K. (1990), ibidem, 236.
Marini S. (2009), Returning to wasting away, The New Urban Question – Urbanism beyond NeoLiberalism. The 4th International Conference of the International Forum on Urbanism,
Amsterdam/Delft, The Netherlands, 253-254.
Friedman Y. (2006), Pro Domo, Actar, Barcelona, Spain.
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FROM LIMIT TO CENTRALITY. REGENERATION OF GENOA’S PORT AREA
THROUGH ARCHITECTURAL AND URBAN DESIGN
Pasquale Mei, Elena Fontanella
Politecnico di Milano (ITALY)
[email protected], [email protected]
Abstract
This survey’s core is the case study of the regeneration of the port area and of the
urban waterfront of the city of Genoa, as an emblematic example where the
architectural and urban design plays an important role, oriented to the transformation
of the port area and to the modification of the relationship that exists between the
harbour and the city.
In particular this will deepen the possibility, to reverse the condition of limit that
characterizes the port area into a new centrality, through the design, passing by
intermediate steps that redefine the modalities of access and of connection between
city and port, breaking the condition of isolation that ports usually present.
As a matter of fact, port areas often set up themselves as isolated elements, or
separated enclosures, that have been took away from the urban body, as service
elements, while in reality they are the main urban element of the port city, as well as
areas through which it’s possible to reactivate new urban transformation dynamics,
that could act on the relation that those particular urban areas establish with the
contiguous urban fabric and with the whole urban structure.
The case-study of Genoa’s port area as it deepens, in this perspective, through three
significant moments of its transformation: the interventions that have involved the Old
Port, realized on the occasion of the Columbian Exposition of 1992, the development
of the Port Master Plan of 1996, and the competitions for the Maritime and
Navigation Museum and for the Ponte Parodi, that where both published in 2000.
Based on the study of those design chances of transformation of Genoa’s port area,
the centrality and the high topicality of the theme of the regeneration, of the reuse of
what already exists as one of the design materials, that passes through the definition
of strategies and projects that work on the topics of stratification and modification,
and on the possibility to produce important results through punctual interventions.
The design actions of addition, subtraction and demolition get a central role, and they
act on the built-up space and on the open space, as on the space of relation between
the parts, reminding us that the culture of the sea, especially in the case of the
Mediterranean, is itself a culture of relations.
Keywords:
Two groups of keywords have been identified. The first one thematic: limit, centrality,
accessibility; the second one strategical: regeneration, reuse, stratification.
“The port is the form of the city, its language,
the reason that comes before any other
reason. The port is its seven lives that have
not run out yet. Nor is the port its factory, or its
store, or its school, or its government. The
port is the city and the city is absorbed in it”.
Maurizio Maggiani [1]
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THE PORT FROM LIMIT TO URBAN CENTRALITY
Even if it’s impossible to distinguish the birth of port cities from their ports, and even if
their lives have been for long time reciprocally influenced, starting from the modern
era it has started a process that has separated the life, the settlement and functioning
roles of the two realities: “the port became a place separate from the rest of the
urban fabric, despite the fact that it often remained the city’s principal activity” [2].
Starting from being the foundation element of the city, the port became progressively
its isolated and specialised, transforming itself in a marginal element: in a limit. This
limit, which has its own built thickness, has led in many cases to the formation of a
physical distance between the city and the sea. From an urban door simultaneously
open on the sea and on the city, the port became an enclosure, and it stopped to
regulate that osmotic process that has for long time characterized the two realities.
The separation between city and port is strengthened also by the fact that the ports
are governed by specific institutions that are different from those that take care of the
urban policy.
According to the modification of the commercial logics and of the transportation
techniques, starting from the second half of the last century, ports lived the
modification and the progressive reduction of the commercial trades. This
determined, beyond the reuse of buildings and spaces that has always characterized
the port areas, the increase of the processes of disinvestment, of reduction of the
used surfaces, and finally of abandonment of the same areas.
Overcoming the negative meaning linked to the definition of disinvested area, also
the port areas could be defined as “urban places that have been found again” [3],
places that have been returned to the city, “strategic areas” through which today it’s
possible to start transformation processes able to involve the entire city in a multiscalar way. It’s exactly in this direction that the port areas, available to new
transformations, could come back to change again their condition from limit to
centrality, through the architectural and urban design, in a logic of urban multipolarity.
The nature of this new potential centrality could furthermore come back to play the
role of threshold, that was a specificity of the port areas, since they were the starting
and arrival point of the flows directed both to the sea and to the mainland. As Walter
Benjamin remind to us “it is necessary to clearly distinguish the threshold and the
boundary. The threshold is an area, a passage area. The word threshold contains the
sense of change. We became poor of threshold experience”.
Therefore, through the design it is possible to reactivate the relationship between the
city and the sea, where this last one should not be just a “panorama, nor a passive
scenery, offered from a terrace, from a promenade, from a square that faced onto it,
but becomes an active participant in new and in some ways surprising relationship
with the city” [4].
THE REGENERATION OF THE GENOA’S PORT AREA AS A CASE STUDY
The transformation process of the port area of Genoa from limit to urban centrality it’s
explored through four steps, chosen as more representative of the regeneration and
requalification of the port area: the intervention on the Old Port, the development of
the Port Master Plan, and finally the projects for the Maritime and Navigation
Museum and for Ponte Parodi.
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Fig. 1 - View of the Genoa’s port area.
The Old Port: a new urban centrality
The transformation of the Old port is the first important design action that aims to the
requalification of the most ancient Genoa’s port area, opening it to the city, to the
urban life, and to the return of the sea to the city: “the city centre had been separated
from the sea for seven long centuries, as the port and customs operations which
encircled the port activities formed a barrier of buildings between city and sea” [5].
The occasion for this redevelopment intervention occurs in 1992, when Genoa was
chosen as the venue of the Columbian Exposition [6] connected to the Universal
Exhibition that was hosted in the same year in Seville.
In the nineties the port of Genoa gave clear signs of recovery, thanks to the new free
market principles and entrepreneurship adopted by the mid-eighties, recovering the
traffic that was lost in the previous decade: this process determined the equipment of
new spaces dedicated to the maritime transport and to the port services, to which it
corresponds to the release of some buildings and spaces belonging to the Old Port.
The project of 1992 designed by Renzo Piano find place exactly on those spaces; it
reopens the Old Port to the city, collaborating to the revitalization process of the port
area as a new urban centre, aiming to transform this part of the waterfront in the
connective element between the sea and the nearby historic centre.
The design strategy carried out by Renzo Piano moved into the direction of the reuse
and the transformation of the structures that already existed in the area, which are
flanked by new punctual interventions and which are characterized by a particular
attention to the redefinition of the open spaces as new urban public spaces. The
Columbian Exposition was also considered as an opportunity for building
architectures and public spaces that could keep an active role and meaning even
after the event that they were designed for. New structures are in fact designed and
built in order to have an important role not only for the port area but for the whole city,
such as the Aquarium, which is still one of the main tourist attractions, and the Bigo,
symbol of the Exposition, panoramic elevator and observation point over the city. At
the same time, the project promotes the reuse of the abandoned industrial heritage,
and especially the structure of the Cotton Warehouses: a building which is developed
in a linear way for four hundred meters that was built in the late nineteenth century. In
order to recover the structure reusing it for new functions mainly related to culture
and leisure, without changing the nature of the shape and its structural design, a new
building has been added and put side by side to the existing one. In the new building
they created spaces for technical facilities, technological services, car parks and
other spaces dedicated to logistics. Only the head of the Cotton Warehouses, added
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at a later date than the original structure, was mostly transformed, and a conference
centre was placed inside it.
In order to manage the transformed or built heritage of the Exposition of 1992, it was
established the Old Port Company, which has partly changed and partly enriched the
functional program.
Fig. 2 - Plan of the intervention on the Old Port.
The Port Master Plan between urban planning and architectural design
A second moment of reflection on the transformation of the port has been identified in
the definition of the Port Master Plan, in a complementary process of integration
between the tools of urban planning and architectural design.
The law number 84 of 1994, considering the Genoese past experiences of the
eighties of gradual disinvestment of the port architectural heritage, defines new
standards valid throughout the entire national territory [7].
A new phase of development, capable of redeeming a general condition of crisis in
the industrial and merchant sector, begins for the city of Genoa. In fact, in September
of the same year, the city of Genoa and the Port Authority enter into a collaborative
program of new spatial planning processes, implemented through regular meetings
aimed at reaching shared agreements, for reaching new design choices for the port
area and for the strengthening of the relationship of the port with the city.
The new General Master Plan of the city was adopted in 1996, at the same time the
writing of the Port Master Plan begins, resulting in a condition of synergy, for
discussion and on-going dialogue between the two different planning tools, for a final
overcoming of the separation of powers and competences.
The law aims to ensure, in fact, that the two different planning tools for the city and
for the port have the same development model and are coherent with each other in
their aim of regeneration.
For this reason, in the same year, a Plan Agency was set up, which combined the
offices of the Port Authority, those of the City, the University, through framework
agreements for cooperation in the fields: urban-architecture, economics transport and
engineering of marine works.
In a second step, four consultants have been chosen, architects of international
relevance: Rem Koolhaas (OMA group), Manuel de Sola Morales, Marcel Smets, and
Bernardo Secchi. They were called to give a contribution to a new design of the
waterfront, for a relationship between city and port related not only to the functional
and logistical requirements, but also to the environmental quality and preserving also
the character of the coexistence of different functions as a witness of a continuous
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process of stratification in the time of the city.
A constant dialogue between citizens, several categories of industrial and port
operators, trade unions and public institutions such as municipal and provincial
governments, have ensured a full comparison for joint decisions, proceeding on three
guidelines: “to rationalise the current uses of port areas, improving the internal logic
aspects through the unification of homogeneous activities; to recover the area
abandoned by the manufacturing industries and by the iron and steel industries; to
selectively expand the port seaward, perpendicularly with respect to the coast” [8].
The Port Master Plan articulated and developed three themes that related to each
other.
Firstly, the infrastructure system is redesigned for a greater rationalization between
the different systems of the traffic flow, abandoning the logic adopted in the previous
decades, of gradual addition of singular elements where new requirements came out
(ramps, lanes). The new plan reviewed with a new logic all the transport service,
separating the port road system, at the level of the dock, from the urban one, that
instead it was on a higher level. In this way it is determined a passage from the limit,
as a barrier between the harbour and the city, to a new margin, that obtains in the
section, in the difference in elevation, the space for new volumes available for port
activities and urban areas. In this way, the Plan involved the articulation of the
infrastructure with new drawn design solutions, going beyond the question of the
division of the different areas, producing residual spaces.
The Plan, therefore, focused on working spaces. The architectures and the spaces
related to the three main functions of the port area - the commercial one, the
industrial one and the activities for passenger traffic - were affected by the
transformation processes to be carried out through different degrees of intervention.
The redesign of the road system became the backbone on which the entrances of
the different production activities, located in areas that were separated one from each
other, find place, giving rise to a gradual delocalisation of the activities not
concerning working on the ships. At the same time the constant increase in traffic
from cruise tourism has prompted the reorganization of a new cruise terminal.
Finally the topic of the connections between the port and the city was handled
through design proposals which were possibly classified according to the different
spatial categories.
A first proposal is that of linear systems of filter, bands that develop themselves in the
longitudinal direction between the port and the city. Those were new edges drawn
according to the logic of stratification that can accommodate mixed-use in a new
ground, formed inside the existing gap between the level of the docks and that of the
city. This is the case, for example, of the project by Manuel de Solà Morales for the
area of ship repairs, or of the project for the “suspended linear park” by Rem
Koolhaas (OMA group), a linear connection between the major points of the city
overlooking the port: the Lanterna, the new terminal and the Old Port.
The other category identified for the connection between the port and the city was
that one that works through grafting, where pieces of the urban fabric reach the sea,
as in the case of the project proposal by OMA for Ponte Parodi and by Manuel de
Sola-Morales for Piazzale Kennedy in which he proposed to advance the line of the
dock where new functions found place along three sections perpendicular to the
coast.
The last category was the one of the islands, such as the area of the "golden
triangle". Those areas, with a strong internal complexity transformed by unitary
design solutions, were still able to redesign parts of the urban fabric that relate the
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city to the port.
The Plan, at the same time, was defined by "designed concepts", it aimed to the
implementation of strategies, and it aimed to be able to recover existing industrial
and professional experience, according to the new needs that modernity demands.
A Plan, therefore, linked to a port housing both logistical and productive activities:
“the Genoa Port Master Plan is not, as a matter of fact, a conclusive document,
defined once and for all, but rather a composite text, made up of sections fixing
steady standards and directions, of a section - the one related to the interventions on
the docks - which can still be adjusted to variation in maritime traffic - and a section
regarding yearly work and investment planning. It is a composite text which aims at
being ambitious and clear in its intentions and at the same time open to the
conditions of uncertainty and flexibility which have always been characteristic of the
management of open spaces and buildings in port areas” [9].
Fig. 3 - Manuel de Solà Morales, design for the new port and city road system.
The Maritime and Navigation Museum: joining new and old architectures
The transformation of the old arsenal of the Genoa’s port, the building Galata, into
the Maritime and Navigation Museum, allows us to go into a project for the port area
that was born from the joining of old and new in architecture.
The intervention was punctual but able to trigger transformation processes that work
at larger scales of reference. It was aimed to return to the city a space that has lost
the use for which it was designed, without keeping the memory of the role that it has
played throughout history, but turning it into a new urban centre of attraction.
As a result of winning the international competition in 2000, the project of
transformation of the arsenal was assigned to the architect Guillermo Vázquez
Consuegra, and it was completed in 2004 with the opening of the museum, in the
year in which Genoa was the European Capital of Culture.
Located on the seafront of the dock of the port, the Galata building dates back to the
seventeenth century, but it has undergone many modifications that have changed its
appearance, especially in the main facade towards the sea and in the roof. To the
original neoclassical façade, in fact, walkways and concrete structures were added,
while the pitched roof was first reduced to a flat roof and finally to sheds. The internal
structure, characterized by parallel tunnel vaults that are developed over the entire
extension of the building, has retained, to the contrary, a greater integrity.
The project for the transformation of the arsenal into a museum works on the issues
of covering, of addition and subtraction, construction and demolition, as well as
stratification, and it is an interesting example of architectural intervention through
building on built-up spaces.
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Although, in fact, in the announcement of the competition it was asked to keep the
added parts, the choice of the designer went in the opposite direction: “our project
was somewhat risky in that it proposed the demolition of episodes built with an
architecture lacking interest which had been added over the years to the old vaulted
shipyard structure. The competition brief suggested maintaining these additions as
they gave the building the protected image which it now presents. But I understand
that on occasions in order to conserve, to preserve architecture of quality, it is
necessary to demolish those episodes which subtract from it authenticity and value
[…]” [10].
The transformation of the building into a museum also needed, according to the
designer, a new image, different from the one given by the ancient arsenal. Hence
the intervention through a covering intervention that does not present itself as a
simple language update of mere appearance, but which is in fact a real modification
of the spaces that manage the relationship between interior and exterior.
The museum demanded a large hall, which has been obtained in the gap that it is
formed in direction of the sea between the old neoclassical facade and the new one
of glass and steel. This, in fact, was placed at a distance that defines a public space
for the entrance in which the neoclassical facade is transformed into the internal
front, visible in a new way, filtered, from the transparent skin.
The transformation of the facade facing north, towards the city, instead, was different.
This, in fact, was treated as a large display window, following the demolition of its
outermost part. It was conceived as a thick facade, in the same time transparent,
vertically marked by buttresses that the demolition process brought to be visible, of
the existing structure. It defined a kind of frame for the galley ship, traditional
historical boat, symbol of the museum that was possible to see from different points
of the city including the nearby elevated highway. Finally the third visible facade,
opposite to the main one, was not covered but it reveals on the contrary the
conformation of the inner space. This was maintained in its original articulation, even
if vertical connections have been modified through the introduction of ramps and
vertical natural lighting on the already existing connections. Even the relationship that
architecture established with the sky was modified by the introduction on the roof of a
new volume: a rooftop terrace, an observation point open the sea and to the city.
“Regarding the relation to history - Consuegra wrote about his project - in the case of
interventions in existing structures, my buildings maintain a complex but comfortable
relationship. […] In our project one will now perceive under the piranesian vaults the
echo of contemporaneity. Something similar occurs with tradition, which needs to be
renewed to stay alive. This renewal allows to reinterpret tradition freely. Interpretation
is therefore not a simple displacement of the past but rather a new adventure, an act
of creation” [11].
One of the most interesting aspects of this project, in fact, is the design concept
where the modification does not imply deletions: even demolishing and transforming,
it continues and sends to the future what it has received from the past, in a vision that
reads in the modification a new form of permanence.
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Fig. 4 - Guillermo Vázquez Consuegra, design sketch for the Maritime and
Navigation Museum.
Ponte Parodi: a transformation between demolition and construction
The international competition for the transformation of Ponte Parodi, launched in
2000, was the last great act of reflection, for Genoa, on the transformation of an
important piece of the historic port area and on the modification of the relationship
between the city and its waterfront. Not only the outcome of the competition, but the
entire process and the variety of the projects and of the design themes proposed,
constituting another element of depth.
The transformation area, Ponte Parodi, a large dock located in the central position of
the port bay, was built between 1883 and 1886 according to the design of the
engineer Parodi, hence the name of the place. Ponte Parodi has long been used for
the movement of goods, until, in the '60s a grain silos was built, a building that in its
highest point reaches 76 meters, that was abandoned starting from ‘80s.
The goal of the competition was continuing the previous transformation experiences
of the port area, and it “has been established to create an international cultural and
recreational centre on Ponte Parodi to serve the city” [12].
Even in this case two main objectives were searched: the recovery of the ancient port
through the introduction of urban functions and the connection of rehabilitated areas
to the urban fabric.
Inside of the competition announcement, a specific functional program was not given,
and its drafting was asked to the designers, but some issues, directions and targets
were fixed. Firstly, the emphasis was on the role that Genoa has served throughout
history as a Mediterranean city, a place of confluence of flows, trades and cultural
relations. Projects were asked to reactivate relations, mainly commercial, but also
tourist and cultural, with the nearby historic centre, and to take into account the
presence of users related to the proximity of the university. Finally, the cruise and
ferry terminal was considered as a great resource for the development of Ponte
Parodi: it could increase the tourist attractiveness of the entire city.
Another topic of great interest was the relationship with what already existed. In fact,
if on one hand, the competition announcement foresaw the demolition of the
warehouses already located on the area, on the other hand it allowed the freedom to
choose the option to keep or demolish, completely or partially, the structure of the
grain silos. It asked to design a public space open to the sea, conceiving Ponte
Parodi, just in a part of it or in its totality, as a “large square by the sea” [13].
Those are the themes and the objectives with which the sixteen groups, admitted to
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the competition after a pre-selection, worked on during the first phase, while to the
second phase just four groups [14] have been selected.
Despite the variety of the design solutions developed, it was possible to identify some
issues of reflection.
Firstly it came out the theme of the relationship with what was already present on the
site of transformation: the relationship that the projects establish, in particular, with
the building of the grain silos. The transformation of Ponte Parodi was in fact, in all
the different designs, always between the opposite but simultaneous actions of
demolition and construction.
The winning project, the one designed by UN Studio (Ben Van Berkel, Caroline Bos),
foresaw to demolish entirely the grain silos, aiming to transform the whole Ponte
Parodi in a ‘three-dimensional square on the Mediterranean’, belonging in the same
time to the sea and to the city. The functional program was structured around the
themes of leisure, recreation, wellness, technology, and commerce, which are
accompanied by a cruise terminal. In the winning project the cruise terminal found a
place inside the thickness of the ground, whose roofing, corrugated and irregular,
guests a park and some sport facilities.
In 2002, following the choice of the winning project, the demolition of the grain silos
started a demolition that required its own project. The same decision of demolishing
the high grain silos building was followed also by other design groups: Foreign Office
Architects, MVRDV, and the group made by Snozzi, Vacchini, Gmür, Manzelle,
Ferrante.
The project developed by this last design group allowed us to introduce a second
theme, in continuity with the previous on: the modification of the morphology of Ponte
Parodi. Also in this situation the intervention went through a process of subtraction, of
demolition, that gives back to the sea a part of the dock, transforming it into an
island. With this project they wanted to underline the need to build not completely
Ponte Parodi, aiming to keep the nature of the docks, as “open areas that are
capable of restoring a sense of space and quality to today’s congested cities.” [15].
Presenting itself in opposition to the tendency of filling up the quays through the
construction, and to the transformation of those spaces into shopping malls, “this
project aims instead to turn the area of the port into a free urban space, like a large
square by the sea” [16], where just a small part of its boundary was built for holding
the expected functions. A similar choice that went in the direction of the modification
of the Ponte Parodi morphology it was that one of the group made up by OMA Rem
Koolhaas and Boeri Studio, that also transformed the dock into an island. The
relationship that this project established with the grain silos, moreover, was extremely
interesting, because it decided to maintain the highest part of the building,
transforming it into a tower, in a symbol for the city entirely surrounded by sea water.
The dock, was transformed into an island, and was also dug in it: a “sunken square”
occupying a great part of the extension of the new Ponte Parodi, while the housed
functions were located in the thickness of the edge, and in the two floors under the
level of the square.
This last project introduced another theme: the relationship between horizontality and
verticality inside the designs and in relation to the sea and to the city of Genoa, that
presented a complex and articulated morphology, between the sea and the
mountains.
The choice of working with a vertical element inside the project comes, on one side,
from the maintenance of the grain silos or from a quotation of it, as in the project of
the Foreign Office. On the other side it came from the choice to define a relation that
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we could define direct or mediated between the city and the sea. We could describe,
in fact, as direct the relation defined by the new Ponte Parodi in a horizontal way
between the urban front and the water, while the presence of a vertical element on
the dock introduced a mediation element, hence a mediated relationship. In this last
case, Ponte Parodi set up itself as another point of view directed to the far and open
horizon of the sea, and the one nearest to the mountains. Concerning this topic, it
was interesting what the designers wrote about: “in an attempt to construct a
topography that preserves the horizontal nature of the building mass, while allowing
for a sustainable amount of volume to be built on the pier, the result is a topography
of extremes. Part of the built mass is concentrated in a tower to be located on the
northwest side of the complex; the other part of the project will develop as a low and
extended mass, closely connected to the ground level” [17]. The winning project,was
that of UN Studio, takes a very clear position, although more or less sharable in this
regard: “with its low-slung, undulating outlines, the piazza retains an unhindered view
of Genoa and its mountainous setting. The project does not propose to replace an
icon with another, but to establish a new type of attractor based on the proliferation of
the experience” [18].
Starting from the relationship horizontal-vertical and coming back to the first issue,
the one of the relationship to the already existing contest, we can remind some of the
projects that work on the maintenance and transformation of the grain silos: the
project of the group directed by Giancarlo de Carlo, that chose to keep partially the
building proceeding through some selected demolitions, and the one by Dominique
Perrault, who used the existing structure as support element for the added volumes:
“this interplay between filled and empty sections gives life to the building, the result of
the association of a rigid and closed body and the free and open cells” [19]. Also the
project by Bernard Tschumi, finally, reused the existing structure, using it as a
basement for a new volume: “to confirm Genoa’s catalyst role in Mediterranean
cultural cross-fertilization, this project uses the silo’s forced vertically and makes
Ponte Parodi a horizontal and vertical symbol of those intersections. A horizontal
glass and steel enclosures sits atop the silo, visible day and night, a lighthouse for
Genoa” [20].
Fig. 5 - Snozzi, Vacchini, Gmür, Manzelle, Ferrante: Ponte Parodi, scheme of
structure and construction phases of the project.
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REFERENCES
[1]
[2]
[3]
[4]
[5]
[6]
[7]
[8]
[9]
[10]
[11]
[12]
[13]
[14]
[15]
[16]
[17]
[18]
[19]
[20]
Basilico G., Maggiani M. (1999), “Fotografie, scritture”, in Aa.Vv., Piano, porto, città. L’esperienza
di Genova, Skira, Milano, p. 26.
Secchi B. (2003), “Cities as Seaports”, in Aa.Vv., Geno(v)a. Developing and Rebooting a
waterfront city, NAi publishers, Rotterdam, p. 76.
Crotti S. (1990), “Luoghi urbani ritrovati”, in Rassegna 42, pp.68-72.
Secchi B., op. cit., p. 78.
Picco R. (1999), “Redeveloping the Cotton Warehouse”, in Bruttomesso, Rinio (edited by), Water
and Industrial Heritage. The reuse of Industrial and Port Structures in Cities on Water, Marsilio,
Venezia, p. 106
‘Christopher Columbus: The ship and the sea', organized on the occasion of the celebration of the
five hundredth anniversary of the discovery of America.
“The relationship between port and urban planning is solved through an agreement procedure
with the municipality (“Intesa con il Comune”), which should precede the Port Master Plan
adoption. The following steps include the opinion of the Consiglio Superiore dei Lavori Pubblici
and the procedure aimed at evaluating the environmental impact, while the Regione is in charge
of the final review and of the final approval of the plan”.
Capoccia F. (1999), “The Port Master Plan”, in Aa. Vv., Piano, porto, città. L’esperienza di
Genova, Skira, Milano, p.14.
Capoccia F., op. cit., p. 16.
Boeri S. (1999), “Design Concepts”, in Aa. Vv., Piano, porto, città. L’esperienza di Genova, Skira,
Milano, pp. 20-21.
Vázquez Consuegra G. (2004), “Museo del mare. Genova”, in Area 77, p. 33.
Vázquez Consuegra G., op. cit., p. 35.
“On the Competition. From the competition objectives”, in Aa.Vv. (2003), Geno(v)a. Developing
and Rebooting a waterfront city, NAi publishers, Rotterdam, p.164.
Ibidem.
Studios admitted to the second phase of the competition: De Carlo, Majowiecki, Mazzolani, Traldi
e Troisi; Foreign Office Architects, OMA Rem Koolhaas + Studio Boeri; UN Studio.
“Snozzi, Vacchini, Gmür, Manzelle, Ferrante. First phase” in Aa.Vv. (2003), Geno(v)a. Developing
and Rebooting a waterfront city, NAi publishers, Rotterdam, p. 250.
Ibidem.
“Foreign Office Architects. First phase”, in Aa.Vv. (2003), Geno(v)a. Developing and Rebooting a
waterfront city, NAi publishers, Rotterdam, p. 226.
“UN Studio. Winning Project”, in Aa.Vv. (2003), Geno(v)a. Developing and Rebooting a waterfront
city, NAi publishers, Rotterdam, p. 176.
“Dominique Perrault. First phase”, in Aa.Vv. (2003), Geno(v)a. Developing and Rebooting a
waterfront city, NAi publishers, Rotterdam, p. 246.
“Bernard Tschumi. First phase”, in Aa.Vv. (2003), Geno(v)a. Developing and Rebooting a
waterfront city, NAi publishers, Rotterdam, p. 254.
FIGURE REFERENCES
Fig. 1 - Masboungi A. (2004), Penser la ville par les grands événements. Gênes, Projet Urbain Éditions de la Villette, Paris.
Fig. 2 - Bruttomesso R. (edited by) (1999), Water and Industrial Heritage. The reuse of Industrial and
Port Structures in Cities on Water, Marsilio, Venezia.
Fig. 3 - Aa.Vv. (1999), Piano, porto, città. L’esperienza di Genova, Skira, Milano.
Fig. 4 - Vázquez Consuegra G. (2004), “Museo del mare. Genova”, in Area 77.
Fig. 5 - Aa.Vv. (2003), Geno(v)a. Developing and Rebooting a waterfront city, NAi publishers,
Rotterdam.
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BEETWEEN CITY AND PORT. ELEMENTS OF A BORDER SPACE
Claudio Finaldi Russo
University of Naples “Federico II” (ITALY)
[email protected]
Abstract
The main aim of the research is to propose a new definition of the space between
city and port as the eminent place where testing original forms of functional
integration. These should be able to reconcile the rigidity of the port infrastructure
with the composition of the historical urban plan.
The study applies to industrial port where the separation between productive areas
and the urban space is typically sharply marked. Starting from the two case studies
of Genoa and Naples, the research suggests an identification method of the inbetween space founded on specific perimeter rules and on the acknowledgment of
characteristic elements of the urban composition. Doing so, urban design tries to
cross out the usual logics defined by trade barrier and “customs officer” wall.
Traditionally, in fact, the city-port separation issue is studied through a waterfront
model approach that views the phasing-out of port areas as an occasion for the city
to get possession of exceptionally large and uncommon spaces close to the historical
city. The alternative, experimental hybrid model here proposed would instead exploit
the in-between space in order to make it, at the same time, both effectively port and
completely city: this result seems achievable as the space between city and port
intrinsically has the unique qualities of being rich of infrastructures and sufficiently
free from the plot of the urban tissue.
More specifically, the research develops several abacus showing possible elements
composition applied to the Neapolitan area from the Immacolatella Vecchia passage
to San Giovanni area.
As comparison, the research also analyzes the transformation of the passenger area
of the port of Napoli since 2000 in order to highlight strengths and weaknesses of
several projects, most of which impacted exclusively on the port side.
Keywords: port and city, border, in-between space, infrastructure, phasing-out,
waterfront.
INTRODUCTION
This paper represents an up-to-date of the PH-D research discussed in may 2001 at
the Dipartimento di Progettazione Urbana of the Università degli Studi di Napoli
“Federico II” [1]. A second work on the same subject was realized in the same year
for the Autorità Portuale di Napoli, inside the Terra european programme – Project
n°55 Posidonia [2]. During these last ten years, in Naples the city-port question was
evoked a lot of times, mainly in occasion of design competitions or during the
Metropolitana underground works. The most significant transformation concerns the
passengers’ area, in front of the Maschio Angioino castle. Here is possible to test a
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first try of a waterfront organization: the customs wall eliminated, city and port divide
a common space, from the Municipio square to the Stazione Marittima1.
On the other hand, where the border between historical city and industrial port is
hard, we measure a sincere and lasting difficulty to define new forms of functional
integration. Even when city and port administrations share solutions (eg. Marina di
Vigliena, Porto Fiorito S.p.a.), these ones choose to work inside respective fields.
The space between city and port, usually characterized from a huge presence of
infrastructures, remains a sort of island that attracts residual functions causing a
remarkable incentive to periferalization.
In this paper the first aim is to propose a clear definition for the in-between space and
to show specific elements that define it2 [3].
METHODOLOGY
I started to work about the physical relations between city and port during my
postgraduate fellowship in Genova, at the Autorità Portuale, since 1996. In that time,
both, City Administration and Autorità Portuale, were working at the respective
masterplans. I found incredible correspondences between Genova and Napoli
territories, but the first one seemed to me more dependent and integrated to its port.
Along 22 kilometres of border I could appreciate an enormous typology of solutions
trying to break the separation between city and port, from infrastructural buildings to
mixed zones of commercial and residential functions. The interest was to categorize
these elements and to propose an abacus of general solutions testable in different
contexts.
I worked with the aid of two photographers, Emanuele Piccardo in Genova and
Claudio Sabatino in Napoli, who realized a large campaign of photos to individuate
the elements and spaces in-between. At that time consultation of maps and aerial
photos in Internet was not possible, so I made graphical restitution of the on the
ground work onto few b/w aerial shoots property of Autorità Portuale. The work in
Genova was mainly a description job, useful to arrange a catalogue; in Napoli I made
a perspective work, trying to select all the opportunities of changing and
transformation of the in-between space.
Genova: a mature system from wich learning.
Inside Genoa’s territory, the city “is” its port. Both for extension and economical
relevance, the port of Genova is the first industrial activity in the city. For that reason
city and port established a strong relationship since ever. Over the centuries the
border assumed very different forms, from the simple “rena” (the beach), to the
“terrazzi di marmo” in XIX century (a wall on the limit with a pedestrian floor on the
top), ending with the contemporary large common space of the Porto Antico.
Outside the historical harbour, the industrial and commercial port activities found a
balance with urban space, sharing a strip of land all along the border. I tried to
resume the vast collection of samples, drawing an abacus of solutions of the different
kinds of city-port relation (fig. 1).
1
See the results of international design competition for Naples passengers’ area. Between teams,
Finaldi Russo C. was consultant in: Boeri Studio e altri (2006), Riqualificazione dell’area monumentale
del porto di Napoli 2° fase, MED mediterranean environmental deck, 2° price, Nausica S.p.a.
http://europaconcorsi.com/projects/18492-Med-mediterranean-Environmental-Deck2
Inside urban planning studies, an interesting PH-D research about in-between space is made by
Scoppetta C. See reference [3].
http://www.anci.it/Contenuti/Allegati/Paper4.pdf
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Fig. 1 – Abacus of the elements
This 3x3 abacus shows the elements that define the border (a railway, a street, a plot
of buildings) and the modality of city-port relation (separation, interface, connexion).
The abacus is an extremely reduced tool to understand all general cases: here, the
drawings in each box assume an icon value of “figure” from which deducing a design
strategy. In this sense I learned from Genova a vocabulary where all single elements
stayed reduced as figures inside the abacus. I also matured the belief that the border
between city and port was not (or no more…) a line, but a strip that changes
continuously its dimension in relation to the urban plan and the needs of the port
areas. The strip is exactly a continuous in-between space made of infrastructures,
empty fields, plants and buildings. This is matter of design where city and port can
test new original forms of functional integration.
Napoli: from the Carmine to San Giovanni a Teduccio.
In 2000, during my PH-D research, Napoli was coming to its new masterplan. The
structure of the Piano Regolatore Generale included, for complex areas, some
detailed sheets where not only dimensional rules were defined, but also general
shaping starts (fig. 2 and fig. 3).
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Fig. 2 – Variante generale al PRG, sub ambito 12 c
Fig. 3 – Variante generale al PRG, ambito 14
Sheets n° 12/c (ponte della Maddalena) and n° 14 (Cirio-Corradini) interested exactly
the space between city and port. I understood that was possible to overlap on these
areas the results of Genoa’s work and the structure of the abacus. I also decided to
extend the methodology to the entire industrial port, from the Carmine to San
Giovanni a Teduccio (fig. 4).
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Fig. 4 – Naples’s in-between space, the perimeter
Here the port was divided from the city by a hard line of walls, a dedicated highway
and sometimes a railway park. In relation to the Genova situation, Napoli was still the
port survived to the Second World War. The interest of the research was to collect
and formalize all the opportunities of transformation inside the strip between city and
industrial port, where testing new urban design strategies (fig. 5).
Fig. 5 – Naples’s in-between space, the sectors
So, I identified 7 sectors where I recognized a potential of transformability3. Each
sector is a masterplan in nuce representing elements and relations that I consider
Sectors are: Carmine, Mercato Ittico, Granili, Vigliena, Corradini, San Giovanni, Depuratore. For each
one I defined inside the strip: the urban and monumental parts that compose it, port infrastructures,
border spaces, longitudinal element of separation between city and port, elements of relation and
connexion modality.
3
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basic, inside project, to achieve the result of a new relationship between city and
port. Sectors are clearly an abstraction and they feature, all together or singularly
considered, as a sort of general guidelines for an urban design competition. In this
sense, the school of Dottorato in Progettazione Urbana4 started from the suggestion
of Mercato Ittico sector to work on a design proposal for the area of Ponte della
Maddalena (fig. 6) [4].
Fig. 6 – Ponte della Maddalena, masterplan
RESULTS
The in-between space is typical of contemporary city where development processes
produce the phasing-out of large pieces of territory, breaking the original plan
continuity. More specific is the case of the space between city and port: here the inbetween is a continuous, a longitudinal strip that changes its transversal dimension
continuously, in a foolish game of economical and political strengths. Each one, port
and city, define the limit over that the other part can’t settle their equipments. This
fact produces at the beginning a sharply marked limit that works, during the time, as
a line of accumulation. Urban materials and port elements amass their selves along
this line, producing a border space, a sort of linear suburb. Only for functional needs
few entrances are created along the customs line. Areas in-between usually are not
planned and show a sort of spontaneous growth that takes advantage from the
adjacency to the main infrastructural systems.
The research tries to define a method to identify in-between space. On the urban
side we can appreciate the ending of the planned urban plot, usually marked by a
main avenue in front of the sea. Here the city builds a sort of continuous façade that
gain the panorama putting itself at a certain distance from the border. The port, on its
part, takes advantage to define dedicated infrastructures around the limit, to keep
Dottorato in Progettazione Urbana XII ciclo (1997-2000), at Dipartimento di Progettazione Urbana of
Università degli Studi di Napoli “Federico II”.
4
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free and empty wharf space. So, railway lines and warehouses occupy the space
nearer the wall. Between these two dynamics a certain amount of space stays
trapped.
I assume this space as the eminent territory where testing new forms of functional
integration between city and port. This is an alternative strategy to the waterfront
issue because there is not a phasing out of the port activity that aloud city to occupy
large spaces in front of the sea. The industrial port maintains their spaces and the full
autonomy while in the same time the city get space to the sea. The mixed functions
candidates to install inside the in-between area are travel agencies, carrier agencies,
commercial buildings, leisure activities, hotel accommodations, multiplex. All that
needs of a strong ground design able to produce high quality of parking areas,
pedestrian walks, connexion spaces with all public infrastructures5.
CONCLUSIONS
What happened in Napoli during these last ten years is mainly a story of design
competitions concluded, assigned and never started. On the other hand, we attend to
the execution of historical projects as the “Villa del Popolo”, near the area of Ponte
della Maddalena and the Mercato Ittico. The question of the space between city and
port, assumed by the city masterplan, never arrived to become a real proposal of
transformation. The most important projects in this area were the renovation of via
Marina and the works of Ferrovie dello Stato that confirm the coastal railway line as a
national line6. On the port side, otherwise, a large programme of works was realized
to continue to be competitive on the national and international scenario. Between
them the one that impacts stronger with the in-between space is the new Marina of
Vigliena, near the ex-fabbrica Corradini and the beach of San Giovanni a Teduccio.
The story of this project is interesting to test the ability to recognize the in-between
question: since 2000 an Accordo di Programma was defined between the Regione
Campania, Comune di Napoli, Università degli Studi di Napoli “Federico II”, Autorità
Portuale and Capitaneria di Porto. A masterplan for the new Marina di Vigliena and
the ex-fabbrica Corradini was draft by the arch. Valeria Pezza (fig. 7 and fig. 8) [5].
See the results of “Paesaggi costieri” international design competition: Gruppo Suburbia, Finaldi
Russo C., Piccardo E. (2001), Innesti di ambienti sospesi, 1°price for the area of Genova: la Lanterna
e il porto antico, MIBAC Ufficio centrale per i Beni Ambientali e Paesaggistici – Legambiente –
CIVITA.
http://architettura.it/architetture/20010627/index.htm
6
The city and Ferrovie dello Stato discussed for long time about a hypothesis of restructuring national
line as metropolitan railway line.
5
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Fig. 7 – Accordo di Programma masterplan (from www.naplest.it)
Fig. 8 – Proposal for the ex-Corradini area, arch. Pezza V.
In this proposal we can appreciate the attempt to cross the railway each time this is
possible to affirm the original relation of the urban part with the coastline. Two
pedestrian overpasses and a road bridge link the residential part to the new
pleasance port. Also the shape of the guardian peer is slightly oblique to accord with
historical urban traces coming from the mount Vesuvio.
In 2005 the Comune di Napoli issued a project financing call won by the Porto Fiorito
S.c.a.r.l. In 2006 the definitive projet was approved and the works started in
September 2011 (fig. 9 and fig. 10).
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Fig. 9 – Marina di Vigliena project area (from www.naplest.it)
Fig. 10 – Marina di Vigliena definitive project (from www.portoediporto.it)
This evolution of the Pezza original draft works on an area all included inside port
territory. In fig. 9 we can see the long footstalk required from the project to find carry
connexion with the city. An heavy building is provided to the root of the peer to grant
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a direct passage from Corso San Giovanni a Teduccio to the service house. The
solution (fig. 11) seems jumping the city without any impact on the urban plan.
Fig. 11 – Marina di Vigliena rendering view (from www.skyscrapercity.com)
REFERENCES
[1] Finaldi Russo C. (2000), Tra città e porto. Elementi di uno spazio di confine, Dottorato di Ricerca
in Progettazione Urbana, Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II”, 2 voll (not printed).
[2] Finaldi Russo C. (2000), Analisi delle problematiche urbanistiche connesse al processo di
trasformazione della fascia costiera, con particolare riferimento alle nuove modalità di interazione
fra aree urbane e portuali e alla crescente vocazione intermodale di queste ultime, Autorità
Portuale di Napoli, Unione Europea DG XVI, programma “Terra” – progetto n° 55 “Posidonia” (not
printed).
[3] Scoppetta C. (2010), Gli “in-between spaces”. Elementi caratterizzanti della metropoli
contemporanea, Cittalia – Fondazione ANCI ricerche.
[4] Finaldi Russo C. (2002), Il progetto di suolo e la nuova misura del ponte in Di Domenico C. a cura
di, L’area progetto, CUEN S.r.l., ISBN 88 7146 604-7.
[5] Pezza V., Orfeo C. a cura di (2009), Progetti per l’architettura della città, Electa Napoli, ISBN 97888-510-0518-4, pagg. 46-49.
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URBAN WATERFRONT REGENERATION PROCESSES.
AN INTEGRATED LOCAL APPROACH FOR THE MARINE PROTECTED AREA
“PARCO SOMMERSO DI GAIOLA” IN NAPLES
Carolina Girardi1, Maurizio Simeone2
1
Department of Urban Design and Planning, University of Naples “Federico II” (ITALY)
2
Centro Studi Interdisciplinari Gaiola Onlus (ITALY)
[email protected], [email protected]
Abstract
Within urban and environmental rehabilitation processes in sensitive contexts,
intervention strategies aimed at integrating sustainability principles identify the
dimensions of participation and collective awareness as factors of social cohesion
directed by technical policy actions necessary to achieveeffective and replicable
results.
In this sense, among the many territorialinterventionsimplemented in later years
onwaterfront stretches characterized by particular historical and landscape
importance, those related to rehabilitation and environmentalenhancement of Gaiola
Marine Protected Area in Posillipoaremostly significant. The interventions are aimed
at the functional adaptation, usability and safety improvement of the existing routes
and shore, in addition to the creation of a new Centre for Research and Scientific
Divulgation. The executor subjects have been the Environmental Department of
Naples Council, with the technical support of the University of Naples Federico II, and
the Special Archaeological Superintendence of Pompeii and Naples, with the
contribution of the non-profit Organization “Interdisciplinary Studies Centre Gaiola”.
The operating procedures have allowed the ecological, economic and social
rehabilitation of an area that,nowadays, is an example of the full implementation of
urban regeneration and sustainable local developmentprocesses. The paper aims at
investigating the correlation between integrated bottom-up approaches focused on
participation practices, and the effectiveness of the results they generate. In this
context, local intervention dimension combines with ethical, social and environmental
values, representing a pilot experience for the future implementation of similar
regenerative processes in other urban contexts.
Keywords: urban waterfront, regeneration processes, sustainabletechnologies, local
development
SUSTAINABLE TECHNOLOGIES FOR LOCALREGENERATION PROCESSES.
THE REHABILITATION OF GAIOLA MARINE *
Introduction
Urban waterfronts sustainable regeneration processes represent aparticular interest
and actualitytopic, strategically correlated to a conscious use of land and tolocal
development. Lots of intervention strategies have been implemented over the last ten
years at European and national level, many of them activated in particular sensitivity
contexts by local Administrative Boards, through spread rehabilitation intervention or
small scale actions, attentive to local communitiesneeds and environmental
protection objectives.During the period 2003-2010the Sea Resources Service
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(ServizioRisorsa Mare) of Environmental Departmentof Naples Council started up
several regeneration projects on parts of the coast characterized by particular
historical and scenic importance;an area that puts together complex socio-economic
issues, strong urban potentialities and significant environmental values,with the aim
of improving the quality and usability of the marine and coast environment of the city
of Naples.
The project arose from the necessity to recover the connection between city and sea,
pursuing the goalof giving back to the citizenship the quality, the enjoyment and the
usability of many coastline areas with their natural, environmental and urban values,
and stimulatingthe sea related economic and recreational activities.The rehabilitation
projects that have affected the examined area have been implemented with the
expert contribution of the Department of Urban Design and Planning of the University
of Naples “Federico II”; the Research Unit has preliminary developed studies aimed
at the proposition of intervention strategies and operational methods appropriate to
the character of places, the control of technical and design solutions, the
development of decision support tools forurban waterfrontregeneration process1.
The research work has proposed a local sustainability oriented approach, both for the
size and small-scale spread actions, and for the social, environmental and economic
implications,tackled through integrated actions. The goal, where possible, was to
revalue and promote economic activities related to the usability of the coastline,
providing actions for the improvement of the accessibility and the waterfront facilities,
in order to favor their use.The formulation of sustainability and environmental
protection proposals has also been motivated by the need to manageinterventions
forparticular environmentally sensitivecontexts.
The activation of micro-rehabilitationspolicieshas been focused on local scale
actions, paying attention to the places identity and recognizability, to the efficient use
of financial and technical resources and to the restoration of newlivability conditions,
consideringthe possible socio economic turnover induced by the environmental
redevelopment.
The operational approach has been tackled considering the environmental dimension
as a directly incident fact on urban regeneration issue, where the context analysis
has been the guiding element directing the design choices. In some cases of
particular environmental fragilityor historical-cultural values memory to be protected,
itwas necessary to coordinatethe actions and requirements to be undertaken by
limiting the transformationprocesses and calibrating them in order to contain physical
and use impacts. The use of recurrent and recognizable technologies and design
solutions belonging to the local building traditions has been a priority, as well as the
actionsreversibility and temporariness.In this context, among the several projects for
Naples waterfront, the rehabilitationintervention on Gaiola Marine Area in Posillipo
representan example of the full implementation of urban regeneration and
sustainable local developmentprocesses, apilot repeatable experience, from which
inferring best practices to carry out future regenerative processes. In this paper we
present some of the recent rehabilitation interventionsthat have contributed to the site
enhancement.
1
The reported rehabilitation interventions on Gaiola Marine have been promoted, elaborated and implemented by
the Sea Resources Service of Environmental Department of Naples Council (G. Cuccaro: Head, A. Amirante, G.
Bianco) with the assistance of the Department of Urban Design & Planning of the Universityof Naples Federico II
working group (M. Losasso: coordinator, V. D’Ambrosio, F. Figlia, F. Mainenti) for the technological and
environmental aspects and decision support in the building process, and some external consultants (S. Barbato,
G. Falciano, M. Tedesco).
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The intervention context
The city of Naples and the neighboring towns, since the Second World War until the
late seventies have undergone a massive urban growth that has completely altered
the original shoreline, creating a continuum that extends from the urbanized town of
Castellammare up the Gulf of Pozzuoli. The area of Posillipo, although not escaped
from the urbanization process that has transformedin just four decadesa marked
agriculturalarea in anurban residential area, is the only part of the coast to have
retained a considerable degree of naturalness, with large green areas that have
survived from urbanization.In this context, the Gaiola site represents one of the most
characteristic and full of history areasof Posillipo hill, presenting both aspects of
environmental and landscape value, and important archaeological exemplars.
The site, which falls today in the coastal boundaries of the Marine Protected Area
“Gaiola Underwater Park”, from the early '80s has undergone a slow and continuous
state of neglectand a strong resources depletion due to decades of indiscriminate
exploitation, becoming one of the many symbols of the degradation and
mismanagement of the Neapolitan territory. Only since the past few years the whole
area is experiencing a new revivalseason, which is leading to the rediscovery of
these places.
The Gaiola descent leads to the sea along two paths swathed in greenerywith
panoramic sea views. The first branch, through the small Gaiola village, leads directly
to S. Basil bay, the small Gaiola port;the two Gaiola islets, corresponding to the
ancient EupleaIsland (one of the names the goddess Venus was identified with),arise
in front of the coast. Along the second branch, through Sejanus cave, you can reach
the ruins of PublioVedioPollioRoman villa (37 BC) dominatingTrentaremipromontory,
defined Pausilypon (from the greek, “a respite from pain”), compared to a city by Ovid
for its importance and for the space organization. The complex, whose remains are
now visible above and below the sea surface due to the collapse of the original
shoreline caused byvolcano tectonic activities, extended from the foot of the hill,
between Trentaremi bay and the islands, up to Marechiaro bay. This is an early
example of a villa built adapting the architecture to the nature of the sites.
The whole villa system has undergone the action of natural elements and
bradyseism, which is estimated to have undergone a 4-5 m lowering of the coast.
The Gaiola islet itself was originally a part of the promontory; archeological findings
can be identified close to the existing docks and in the area surrounding the islet,
where you can detect many Roman submerged remains.
Besides the extremely importantlandscape and archaeologicalhistoricalvalue,
especially if referred to the geographical and social context of the city of Naples,
there is thearea naturalvalue, represented both by the emerged coast, that embodies
all the characteristics of flora and fauna reef habitat, andby the seabed,hosting a
large number of animal and vegetable species.
Goals, intervention strategies, sustainable local technologies
The intervention area, a sensitive context rich with memory, archaeological evidence
and artifacts built in continuity with the striking natural landscape, thus represents a
unicum environment, whose surplus value lies in the harmonious coexistence of
archaeological emergencies and natural surroundings. The ability to interact with the
environment can be linked to the understanding,adaptability,and use of the places,
without altering their equilibrium. The loss of this balanced relation observed in many
parts of the Marine Area, has prompted the study of multiple aspects of the
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landscape in order to plan the necessary actions to restore the original conditions,
ensuring environmental protection.
Preliminarily, the study of the sites state of conservation highlighted the widespread
degradation of the pedestrian access to the marina and of the dock itself, whose
availability was severely compromised by the evident deterioration of the
structures;in particular,the large ramparts retaining walls, were characterized by
erosion, cracking, delamination and detachment of parts of the wall surface. The
main rehabilitationinterventions affecting the area have consisted in the functional
adaptation of the pedestrian paths and in the reinforcement of the tuff wall by the
dock.The analysis of the context has been a guiding factor for environmental and
architectural choices; the technical solutions,coming from the local building tradition,
were selected from those recurring on the site and managed in order to integrate
without overlapping, affecting in a limited way the reconfiguration of existing
morphological conditions.
The rehabilitation of part of the natural landscape and of built artifacts,being in a state
of widespread degradation and decline, required particularly sensitive interventions,
with the need to preserve the cultural identity of places and artifacts and to
counteract the degenerative processes.
Using adaptive and customizable technologies, the new built interventions and
natural pre-existing conditions coexist in their status, with a clear visibility leading to
their direct recognition. In this sense, the sustainability of this approach lies in the
ability to propose appropriate technological solutions, which respect the character of
places, updated through the use of innovative non-invasive eco-friendly technologies.
It was given particular attention to the adoption of local materials, such as lime, tuff
and volcanic stone, and durable, easyto manage, inexpensive and, although
updated, consolidated in the local building traditions technical solutions. It was also
chosen to adopt traditional processes, provisions and equipment, and to resort to the
place workers, in order to encourage the revitalization of local technical skills and
knowledge. Another advantage of using local materials and techniques is the easy
availability and the consequent reduction of the economic and environmental supply
and transport impact.An example of synthesis between innovation and tradition is
represented by the use of recomposed with resin and cement tuff slabs for the
dockpaving, in order to obtain aconsistent intervention with the environmental nature
of the places and ensuring a good resistance to weather and marine factors, not
obtainable with natural tuff (Fig. 1).
The application of FRCM strips for the static improvement and reinforcement of
damaged parts of the wall facing the dock, coupled with additional tuff elements for
their protection and covering, has shown how innovative and dematerialized
technologies and consolidated materials, belonging to the local tradition, can skillfully
interact for a durable, eco-efficient, reversible and localized results (Fig. 2).
During the rehabilitation process the relationship with various stakeholders was
strategically important, evaluating the instances they expressed and promoting
listening activities; this strategy has allowed testing the importance of sharing goals
and strategies and achieving successful results at the local scale. The interventions
were implemented taking into account the functionality and environmental
compatibility of technical and design solutions, pursuing research in the quality of
open spaces, with attention to the optimization of economic investment, the reduction
of environmental impacts and a more rational use of resources. At the same time,
such interventions have represented a driving force for local sustainable
development, playing on tourism, environment and urban entrepreneurship, and
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represent a cohesion factor between the local
economic,environmental and social regenerationneeds.
communitiesinterests
and
Fig. 1 Rehabilitation of the dock.In order to obtain a consistent intervention with the places
environmental characters and guarantee a good resistance to weather and marine factors, it has been
installed a recomposedtuff slabs pavement above the existent degraded concrete, and the existent
perimeter riddle has been integrated with volcanic stone blocks with similar dimensions to the existing
ones.
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Fig. 2 Rehabilitation of the tuff wall.Static improvement and reinforcement of the degraded existing
wall through the restoration, integration andlocalized replacement of the damaged parts using “like for
like” techniques and applyingFRCM strips covered by tuff elements, in order to avoid the mortar
deterioration and to protect the carbon fibers (Figures 1 & 2 reproduce the technical boards exposed
at “World Urban Forum” side event held at the Faculty of Architecture of the University of Naples
Federico II).
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THE MARINE PROTECTED AREA “PARCO SOMMERSO DI GAIOLA”. THE
ROLE OF CERD **
The "Parco Sommerso di Gaiola" (Gaiola UnderwaterPark)Marine Protected Area
(MPA) was established in 2002; its name comes from the two islands standing few
meters away from Posillipo coast, in the northwesternGulf of Naples. TheGaiola
MPA, divided into two areas with different protection schemes (A-Zone:Fully
Protected Reserve, B-Zone: General Reserve - Fig 3, 4), with an area of just 41,6
hectares, extends from the picturesque Marechiaro village to the striking Bay of
Trentaremi, enclosing off the coast part of the great Cavallararocky bank. Currently
managed by the Special Superintendence for Archaeological Heritage of Naples and
Pompeii, the Gaiola Underwater Park owes its singularity to the fusion
ofvolcanological, biological, historical and archaeological aspects inserted in one of
the most attractivecoastal landscape in the Gulf.
Fig. 3, 4 The Marine Protected Area “Parco Sommerso di Gaiola”. Partition between Zones A and B
Besides the unquestionable geoarchaeological interest of the area, the seabed of the
Park certainly represents nowadays the greatest biological interest area in Naples
coastal sector. The extreme geomorphological complexity that characterizes the
seabed of the park, partlydue to the original tuff stone remodeling action occurred in
Roman times, results in an extreme environmental heterogeneity, which is the basis
of the considerable biological complexity found.
Unfortunately the great biological and historic archaeological significance of the area
is countered by the enormous problems that the Park had to face since it was born,
in order to effectively protect and enhanceits resources. At the basis of these issues
it certainly lays the hard social and territorial context of the Park,thatput itunder a
continuous and disproportionate anthropic pressure, both from land and sea, the
whole aggravated by environmental degradation determined by the thirty-year state
of neglect of the whole area.
Besides, a great impetus to the whole area discovery was given, from 2009 on, by
the unification withPausilypon environmental-archaeological Park into a single tour
and educational itinerary, a strategic choice for the national circuit of archaeological
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and environmental heritage. A geographical, natural and archaeological
continuumthat has seen theSuperintendence for Archaeological Heritage of Naples
and Pompeii, manager of the Park Board, as the unifying force for the enhancement
of the entire coastline.
Since 2005, the worthwhile cooperation between the managing body of the MPA and
the Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies (CIS) Gaiola Onlus has led to a convention for
the protection and enhancement of natural resources and historical and
archaeological sites of the area that has stimulated the real rediscovery and
rehabilitation of the entire coastal area through reclamation activities, research and
scientific divulgation, which over the years have been accompanied by the structural
architectural and environmental regeneration of the site.
Research and scientific divulgationfor the sustainable use of the MPA
Besidesthe architectural rehabilitationworkson Gaiola port, since 2005, thanks to an
agreement between the Superintendence for Archaeological Heritage of the Province
of Naples and Caserta and Gaiola Onlus CIS, it was started off an extensive project
for the protection and enhancement of natural and historical archaeological heritage
of Gaiola MPA. From the beginning,an ample space has been dedicated to
awareness campaigns and environmental education through the development of
specific educational projects aimed at helping the new generations rediscover the
Sea of Naples. Specific research projects were carried out in both naturalistic and
geoarchaeological field aimed atproducing new useful data to highlight strengths and
weaknesses, in order to plan a suitable strategy for resources management.
Therefore two parallel plans of action, where scientific research, essential to acquire
new and more detailed information on natural and historical archaeological resources
of the MPA, which is the object of protection actions, is joined by a strong popular
component of the acquired information, in order to instill in the local community a real
awareness about their environmental and cultural heritage, as well as the sense of
belonging and sharing of its resources.
Fig. 5Methodological approach scheme adopted by Gaiola OnlusCIS
Since 2006, the development by Gaiola Onlus CISof local continuous scientific and
educational activities has been extremely significant;they have begun to give the
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awareness amongst the local community of the real presence of MPA, till then never
really perceived. The development of these activities has also helped to ensure a
constant monitoring of the area throughout the year by experts in the field and simple
volunteers. At the same time itwas also developed a specific monitoring project of
sea violations, carried out in agreement with the Port Authority of Naples, witnessing,
in just four years, to an almost total resetting of the violations arising from boating
activities in the MPA.
In terms of environmental rehabilitation there have been several interventions to
recover the MPA coastal marine environment from the thirty-yeardegradation. In
particular, in 2007 it was made an important reclamation of Marine Protected
Areaseabed, which has led to the removal of several tons of waste.
The Centre for Research and Divulgation: local community involvement as a
revitalization strategy
One of the factors that mostly affected the environmental degradation of the area
and, in particular, the Fully Protected Reserve Zone of the Park, was the presence of
a building called "The little Convent", facing Gaiola islet, owned by Campania Region.
Although the building was closed to the public, its fences wereoften illegally
overstepped or dangerously climbed; in fact, the MPA biological-environmental
monitoring data, conducted in 2005 by CoNISMa, indicated the Fully Protected
Reserve Zone as the greater anthropic impact area of the wholeMPA.
This building state of neglect decisively affected on the possibility of ensuring the
proper decorum of the site and the ability to control the area and its social and
environmental real regeneration (Fig. 6); at the same time, given the strategic
location, once recovered it could have been a great potential source for the
institutional purposes of the MPA.
The rehabilitation project is part of Gaiola Underwater Park MPArehabilitation and
environmental enhancement activities, organized by the Superintendence for
Archaeological Heritage of Naples and Pompeii in cooperation with the non-profit
organization GaiolaCIS. The unceasing complaintabout the property deterioration
carried out and documented by GaiolaCIS, supported by the MPA Agency, has led to
entrust thebuilding to the Park, to be used for institutional purpose.The formal
procedures followed in this case rise from the need to create a real place for
safeguarding and a Centre for the dissemination of good practices related to
sustainable use of marine territory. The combined work of the Superintendence for
Archaeological Heritage and Gaiola CIS has succeeded in transforming a symbol of
decay in an operational Centre for Research and Scientific Divulgation in the MPA,
which satisfied both the purpose of protectingand developing scientific research, and
the training, education and information activities related to the tourist-cultural use of
the site.
The intervention on the building has been planned in two phases: a first step to
secure and refurbish the property (Fig. 7) and a second phase in which the halls
have been redesigned and organized. Besides the building works,the outdoor areas
werecleared up and recovered in order to create amediterraneanbotanical garden
(Fig. 8), adjust the outside lighting, clean the upper access path to the area and affix
appropriate information boards.
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Fig. 6 The“Little Convent” before the securing and refurbishing works; Fig. 7, 8 The “Little Convent”
nowadays
Open to the public in 2010, in 2011 the Centre for Research and Divulgation (CeRD)
reached full operation, both for the research and divulgationactivitiesinvolved, andfor
the control and protection of the Park itself, making a major step forward for the
MPAredevelopment.
The CeRDopening allowed an action of direct control on the most valuableand
riskyarea of the MPA. In planning the area appropriate strategy management,both
the urgent need to preservetheFully Protected Reserve Zone and the problem of few
public accesses to the sea were taken into account.
The environmental sustainability technical policy actions pursued by MPA has always
tried to combine biological-archaeological protection and sea public use, both
through continuous awareness campaigns for the area users, including volunteer
activities, and supporting the MPA“sustainable use” principle, by replacing, whenever
possible, the word ban with the word regulation. According to this principle, the
access to the Park A-Zone was open to the public with a special regulation thatallows
the free use of the Fully Protected Reserve Zone, assuring the archaeological and
environmental conservation of the greatest quality area and safetyfor citizens, visitors
and Park users.
Since 2010, this regulation has definitelyreduced anthropic pressure and the offenses
to the Fully Protected Reserve Zone of the Park, as well as an immediate
improvement of the area general livability. In 2011, positive results from such
regulation allowed to validate and accredit the sustainable use rather than the ban
principle. All examined parameters show a reduction up to 85% of the principal
offenses in the Park A-Zone.
In recent years, Gaiola Underwater Park has been consolidating its role as a
laboratory for knowledge and enhancement of natural, historical and archaeological
resources of the City of Naples marine environment. This is the result of careful
protection, conservation, awareness and scientific divulgationactivities relatedto the
most valuableelementsin this coast area; these activities are carried out by
exhibitions, conferences, seminars, guided tours, environmental education in
schools, workshops, University students training, andofferingdifferent itineraries,
guided tours and events that in recent years have brought Italian and foreign visitors
to rediscover the too long forgottenNaples seahuge heritage.
Today, the Centre for Research and Divulgation of Gaiola Underwater Park
represents a new benchmark for the rediscovery of the natural and historicalarchaeological heritage ofthe City of Naples,place of many information, training,
promotion, popularization of science, research and preservationactivities, acting as
the real operationalbase of GaiolaUnderwater ParkMPA.
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