The back of the city. The case study of the Industrial area of Padova (IT)

The paper is the results part of the research on architectural and urban design ongoing at University of Padua (IT) – Department of Civil, Environmental and Architectural Engineering – that aims at defining analysis tools and design strategies starting from case studies of the geographic area of Padova and extended to a more general context of transformation of contemporary urban landscape. In particular, we intend to describe here the results of analysis and design strategies hypothesized on the north-east historic city area, characterized by the presence of a large, homogenous, compact, and closing toward the city industrial area. This part of the city, as we know it today, is calling into question again by the change of the productivity paradigm, playing out in Italy from the last decade, which has as result the crisis of the spaces for the production. The industrial area of Padova (hereinafter ZIP) is analyzed in this research starting from its shape: the area is opposed to the city through a compact perimeter, beyond which starts an homogeneous industrial texture, organized around an orthogonal road structure. Supposing the progressive disappearance of some internal parts of the ZIP (vacant lots, abandoned buildings, underused services), the research proposes a progressive approach of the margins of city and ZIP, between which extends an open space dotted with city fragments (residential areas, public equipments, single buildings), characterized by the presence of large infrastructure (power lines, canals, fast flowing roads) that have found in this undefined area the ideal place to develop themselves. The analysis and design of this in between space is considered central in order to fragment the margins compactness that surround it, gaining spaces for hybridization and contamination, inside a once homogeneous texture. The project is the main tool of the research. It is understood not as the result of the research, but as support on which take place studies, information, assumptions, interpretations, in which the feature may recurs in other cases, or increase the knowledge on similar issues. In particular, the research explores the possibility of concentrating the design strategies along some sections that cross the space between ZIP and city edges, hold together large infrastructures, public equipments, elements of different texture (fields, residences, productive activities) through a linear system of public spaces that explore the back of the city (places unknown to most people, service elements, marginal spaces). The project is intended as condition able to break the separation between parts of the city and show and highlight elements unknown to citizens through sequences of public spaces. The analysis and design proposed by this research highlight the ability to live up to expectations of transformation of a part of the city, breaking a uniform condition through a linear infrastructure along which is designed the public space. More generally, it addresses the issue of public space as tool for transformation, hybridization and interaction between different spaces, hypothesizing its role as possible structure of the contemporary city.