Piazza Europa
Between Etna and the sea, in the heart of the city of Catania, the need for the municipal administration to manage urban traffic and to stop the wild parking, was an opportunity to test a new public space that give rise to a square-garden whose concept arise from a few key words: public space, urban ecosystem, flows and functions, biodiversity.
The regeneration of a strip of the city is part of a global project for the construction of a parking on two levels under the sea quota, in order to distort the original image of the existing public space. A roof garden articulates a system of places that are based on a logic of an open project that is capable of adapting itself to the different needs.
The "green" merges with the architectural sign and becomes architecture. A YES denies the boundaries: it pass soon from the concept of flowerbed to the fusion between the ground and flooring. "Vegetal lines" creep on the flat surface and lead and open the city to the sea.
The environment takes a key role: the need to integrate the project with the existing place, without changing the memory, is primary.
In fact, it tried, through three staggered levels, to integrate the surrounding space to a new way of experiencing the open space.
On the first level, the one in direct contact with the adjacent square, on the extension of the existing pavement, paths are extracted that, alternating linear green inserts and trees, lead to a totally treated with grass platform, that is overlooking the sea.
At the level -1, a path, that cross a small courtyard that overlooks meeting places, leads to a real window to the sea which leads, through the road, at a third level in direct contact with the coast.
The project promotes a different way of living space: the user is involved to such an extent as to become itself part of the composition. The principle of Agritecture ( that is part agriculture and part architecture) drives the creation of a place that is designed to accept and promote biological processes and vital relationships, respecting biodiversity linked to the specificity of places.
The planting wildflowers find great space: it consists of ornamental grasses and the inclusion of plants that belong to the tradition of Catania's gardens. Over seventy species of plants are integrated into the architectural sign, converging into a single manufactured in which the chroma and the variety of vegetation have the task of triggering a real sensory involvement. Promiscuous spaces allow to organize workshops, educational activities, recreational and business, and turn the court into a place of social interchange that is able to recall young people who are now deprived of outdoor spaces that was useful for the aggregation.
Instead, on the coast, a green carpet borders a piece of the city that is devoted to the relax and the direct relationship with the sea.
The texture of composition, through linear perspectives that open the city to the sea, welcomes the idea that the "green" becomes a field of experimentation of public space's models, through a cultural approach that addresses the design theme as "real in the making, an event open trial "(A. Geuze) that are " intended to accommodate and encourage biological processes and vital relationships" (A. Lambertini).