Mediterranean

How to "make cities" in a city where the characteristics of its recent foundation story are as tangible as they are "denied" by the recent ways of its urban growth? Are these characters still "necessary" or rather "nostalgia" unsuccessful? What are the conditions that we believe can give "urbanity" to a space in the contemporary city? The ambition to question ourselves on these issues is the theme of our project proposal, in an attempt to try to give architecture, even today, a social role for the inhabitation of man. We think that a possible key can be in the ability to "establish places" in the contemporary city, through the architecture of public space. Then in the outskirts without quality it is possible to start from rethinking the "voids" as places: thickening around them complementary functions, capable of giving intensity of life to the space. In the case of the project area the challenge lies in being able to assign intensity to a space, starting from the acceptance of a very small building program: on an area of ​​3 hectares and a half, "occupying" with the "positive" not even 1 tenth. Architecture can define the urban infrastructure capable of containing changing, dynamic activities, to which the planned sacred building can be the complement.

The need for the "institution" of a place, whose current lack of recognition and lack of quality is even foreshadowed in its urban designation (Q4), has led us to seek quality and potential not immediately obvious, indeed, from our point of view , today misled by the current design of the road structure and the relationship of indifference of the building fabric with it. From the overlapping readings of the transformation of the Pontine territory, from the traces of the landings, from the orographic signs, we have been able to highlight the presence of a natural system strength of the ditches and channels that denounce the marshy and marshy origin of the area and define the its link with the marine coast. Furthermore, it seemed to us that the Via Lunga, which is now interrupted behind the residential offshoots of the Piccinato directional system, could be the object of a strengthening operation of its role within the area. Starting from these elements, the idea of ​​working on two opposing themes was born to give urban quality to the project place: - The act establishing the place through a careful but decisive sign: a "cross" interrupted by the new public arcade, completed by the head of the sacred building and the tower of the guesthouse. - The integration of the area with the naturalistic / environmental system at the territorial scale, key element that can be the binder of the area with the infrastructural system sea-mounts, the neighboring sector Q5, the city and the sea.