VISIONS ON THE FLOW OF THE RIVER,.A LECTURE ABOUT URBAN DESIGN PRACTICE IN FLORENCE.

California State University, Firenze, 21 Gennaio 2008By Eva Parigi and Matteo Zetti, ZPSTUDIO

Just few words to introduce our professional practice: we are anarchitectural office based in Florence since 2003 working witharchitectural design and also exhibit and product design.

Our practice tends to looking at the city and urban issues fromalternative points of view; the first aim of our works is tocarrying out a change of perspective, to find new angles to perceivereality from.

Through our work we try to reach an idea of design as atransformation process, that generates not only shapes but ratherenergy systems, dynamic environments.

We are fond of working in Florence, in this historical and in manyways still environment, because we think there is no better place toprove that if design practice aims at innovation, it shall developea research work that has to be the highest asymmetrical, innovative,uncostrained. A research work that has to shift the attention of theproject from architectural element themselves to a transformationprocess, creating not only shapes but rather energy systems, dynamicenvironments, spatial relationship

What we are going to show you today is part of a research work whichwe’ve been carrying on since 2005 on urban non-invasiveecostructures.

The whole urban design is located along the flow of the Arno riverand is called NOVOLUME. We called it a sensitive planning action of urban episodes. NOVOLUMEhas been set in Florence in order to expand the contrast between theimmobility of the historical town, which is unchangeable by its samedefinition, and an action made of open and light interventions.

The planning action aims at operating in an extremely unchangeableand hermetic urban context by facing the very limit of architecture,that IN SUCH A CONTEXT has to find its way with the possibilities

offered by interstitial and relational space, and by finding newlinks with urban fluxes, rather than from a design of form andvolumes

The final aim of that kind of action is the creation of spaces thatestablish unusual relationships between private and public space.

It is an urban system set along the Arno river beside a powerfulsequence of urban frames, those who everybody bears in mind whenthinking at Florence llike the postcard reinassance city.

The system is made of three junctions, put in different subsequentfragment or photograms deliberately choosen from the landscape alongthe Arno banks. Three design plots are located along the river banks.

We choose to work on the Arno river as the main urban infrastructurethe city of Florence ever had, always having played a central rolein the history and development of the city itself.

Untile the end of the XIX century its banks were still used as aleisure ground by the florentines, and the river itself has beenused in the past centuries for waterway transports and also as theengine for watermills and factories.

At the beginniing of XX cent with the growth of the industrialsettlements the Arno river begin to loose its functionality as astructure; in recent times it became highly polluted and in the endbecomes nothing but a breakage between the two different parts ofthe city, to be just quickly passed across by car.

The river area is a kind of abstraction, an off-limits area,forbidden to pedestrian walks, but at the same time the real centralstructure of the city. we tried to recover its vital functionsetting up a pacific occupation of some spaces along the river,residual spaces although very narrow to the historical symbols andmonuments of Florence.

The NOVOLUME system tries to reconstruct through subsequentphotograms a project on the environment, based on a few flexibleelements with the lowest volume, and the lowest environmentalimpact. But the highest figurative.

CATCHER IN THE FLOW is an urban assimilator, a movable pavillionregistering and storing the energy originated by the urban fluxes.This energy originates from the continual clash between the massiveuse of urban space and the strong dimensional limitations of thecity itself.

The pavillion is equipped with a system of receptors, like movableaerials provided with receptors at the end of each one, sensitive tothe wind movements, to the noise of traffic and to the environmentalcongestion: this potential is transformed into positive energy to beused for all the activities inside, which have been addressed topublic facilities and services.

It is a sort of breathing building.

Inside the pavillion a tourist welcome area and facilities arelocated, with two huge terraces directly facing the monuments.

The skin of the building is a vitreous resin chassis beared by aseries of thin alluminiium frame, entirely covered by little mobileTeflon aerials.

This project URBAN ISLANDS aims at giving new life to the riverbanks on urban tracts. It is bestly addressed to the city dwellers,who never in their life stepped over this urban lenght of the bank.

The URBAN ISLANDS can be seen as a democratic act of displacement,consisting in dropping an artificial landscape, freelydecontextualized, along the banks that would be normally unusable.

In that way, a new and unusual point of view on the city has beencreated, activating thus, as we hope, a certain feeling ofriappropriation of a secret place, hidden or simply unapproachable,making it possible to enjoy it at its fullest. It is a system of floating pavillions which can make use of recycledfloating decks deriving from out of use docks or harbour equipments.

The system becomes available even for local city councils of otherfluvial italian cities, according to various standards; at themoment, the following models are being analyzed: Piombino (basic,Panarea (high quality), Dubai (luxury).

The spatial arrangement of the floating islands provide for a greatamount of outdoor equipped areas, with a gentle slope, and somesmaller volume for indoor activities. The sloping bridges can becovered with precious tek floorings (for the luxury model) or withvery much cheaper modular 3D moulded recycled panels, made withFlexfoam.

A-LONG PARK is located alongside an important traffic joint wherethe eastern boundaries of the urban centre meet the suburban waysleading to the Fiesole hill and to the south of Florence. The riverappearance itself changes from now on, from a highly constructed toa green landscape, looking east to the Anconella Park.

This is a landscape design, an environmental open program, appliedto a very long sequence of pedestrian walks standing between theavenues called “Lungo l’Affrico” and De Amicis”.Its aim is the creation of a linear park instead of the currentdisconnected traffic dividers, giving a new identity to an axiswhich is now inactive, apart from traffic canalization.

This Park has been conceived both for fast use, short halts, and fora more continuative use for the neighbors.The green strip has been colonized by a variable functional grid,all the different pieces following one another on a previous designof the areas. This design grid would define as many degrees ofcustomization, directly selected by a single user and the wholeneighborhood through a process of sharing managed by theneighborhood council.

TARAFLEX= SPORTS OUTDOOR FLOORINGS

The grid or surface unit program tries to provide for order wherescattering and disorder rule, likely bringing in the next few yearsto decay. It is a deliberate drastic scheme nonetheless allowing atthe inside the highest degree of freedom: each single cell may befreely customized by the user or by groups of user joined together.Many uses have been provided for the single units: sportsfacilities, rest and relax, kids playgrounds, botanical gardens,small performing stages, infesting weeds gardens, small ponds…

These projects try to enhance the dynamic dimension of this peculiarfragment of landscape; each one of these, has been seen as a movingprocess, as a changing scenery which multiplies the options, andintercepts single episodes offering an unusual glance all around andtransforming a static space in dynamic, the dynamic space ofnarration.