Forms of living

This urban project in the periphery of Verona explores different forms of living in a wide spectrum from urban- to domestic spaces, considering social- and environmental factors. Challenging the existing conditions, a new intervention is grafted onto the city of today, looking at that of tomorrow.

This project proposes an alternative resolution of a typical situation in the Italian peripheral context exploring the urban potentials of an abandoned area in the north of Verona. The site is located along the main route of the city and in a central position of the neighborhood, which highlights its vocation as public place. Nonetheless, the landscape around the neighborhood with the hills in the north and the rivers in the south represents a latent quality of the entire area. Consequently, the project strategy is led by a longitudinal green void that suggests a clear north-south reconnection at both urban and territorial scale. On an architectural level, the project acts as a completion of the adjacent buildings and the urban fringed texture. The organization of the urban fabric reinterprets the surrounding typology, breaking down with the current model of the private-walled garden and increasing sensibly the amount of public space through a system of paved public squares. The ground floor structure allows the flexible appropriations: commercial activities, working spaces or neighborhood services, in such a way to guarantee active and different intensity of uses. Likewise, in typological research, to accommodate a wide variety of family types, so as to create a diverse and mutually supportive neighborhood, three alternative housing models are developed by exploring different forms of living: shared apartments, generous urban villas, and units with minimal spatiality. The architectural composition doesn’t aim to create formal novelties but rather to establish a familiar association with the context, challenging its principle. The urban design layout and the individual units reflect a common logic, that fully expresses the architecture as a background of everyday life. In the belief that only through commissioning relationships between public and private spaces, it is possible to create an open and inclusive city that acts in continuity with the past, looking at the future.