Naples, here are Renzo Piano’s projects to relaunch Fontanelle and the Sanità district
A project of Renzo Piano for the Health District. It was created by young architects under 35 of the G124 working group – paid with the senator’s salary for life – who decided to concentrate their efforts on the recovery of some spaces: the Cemetery of the fountains and the churchyard of Maria Santissima del Carmine.
The goal of the Genoese archistar’s group is «to create a continuous, public space, a square available to residents and tourists, illuminated and equipped with spaces in which to stop and entertain». The renderings were illustrated yesterday to the mayor of Naples Gaetano Manfredi, at Palazzo Giustiniani in Rome, where the mayor met the group of young people.
“A gift to the city – underlined the former rector – This too is an important step for a part of the Sanità district which, with the tourist boom we are experiencing, is one of the city’s major attractions”. The theme of this year’s G124, assigned by Renzo Piano to his working group, is “the piazza”. The project area identified by the under 35 Neapolitans is located in the innermost part of the Rione Sanità, in the space in front of the church of Maria Santissima del Carmine, in via Fontanelle.
In addition to the space facing the Fontanelle cemetery, the project envisages the rearrangement of the church’s parish churchyard and the adjacent terraced garden, currently privately owned and also intended by the project for public use. The work is divided into three areas of different ownership: entrance to the Fontanelle cemetery (heritage of the Municipality of Naples), the churchyard of Maria del Carmine (Curia of Naples), Cordonata (private property).
Despite the triple nature, the intervention is conceived as unitary and continuous with the aim of allowing complete accessibility of the spaces, guaranteeing their safety and allowing the territory to welcome the tourist flows from the reopening of the monument. The young architects of the Piano group try to look at the moon and not at the finger, setting themselves ambitious goals, such as creating a physical link between the current Materdei metro line 1 station, the future exit to Rione Sanità and the new square. It is no coincidence that four small public areas were designed (currently undergoing approval by the municipal administration), furnished with seats, trees and hedges in continuity with the urban regeneration strategies of the neighborhood, already implemented since 2016 by Diarc together with the San Gennaro Community Foundation, in other areas of the Sanità district.
The focus on health remains maximum. Just think of the visit of the former Minister of Culture Dario Franceschini at the beginning of September to the Catacombs of San Gennaro. The idea of one of the most celebrated architects in the world, Renzo Piano, is to act on the suburbs, for the city that will be. A work that is based on six points, which are those that can transform a neighborhood, even the most degraded, into a livable part of the city.
«In the suburbs it is important – reads the project – that there is a generational, economic, ethnic and consequently also functional mix. We need to fertilize them by disseminating them in public buildings, services, schools, universities, libraries, civic centres, cultural activities. The neighborhoods will then be connected to the center without the obligation to use the car, enhancing public transport. Greenery as a connective tissue, a filter between city and countryside that limits soil consumption. As far as the mending works on the buildings are concerned, the method that allows for surgical intervention is fundamental, with light construction sites that do not alienate the inhabitants, with whom the architect must dialogue». Thus was born the project that focuses on Naples, coordinated by the tutors Nicholas Fiore (Associate Professor Diarc) e Daniela Buonanno (diarc researcher), and created thanks to the work of the architects Marino Amodio, Giuseppe De Pascale, Orazio Nicodemo and Davide Savoia.