Magra river: a disputed landscape

A territory, historically disputed between water and anthropic form, is located in a flood plain between southern Liguria and northern Tuscany. A greater design study, regarding the edge between river and city, was made to invert a widespread tendency, which is to build high enbankments causing a real river disappearance from the urban landscape.

The complexity of the subject caused that the site analysis process has become part of the project, therefore the data cataloging and his representation presented a new study. Moreover, during the analysis phase, data and maps were crossed-check with the purpose of making evident new liked informations, such as the link between land use and geology, the identification of landscape units and studies concerning the link between land use and soil permeability. The location required the development of two different projects, but with a common theme: the perception of the landscape. In Pontremoli the project is focused on the perception, generating new visual relationships between the landscape, the historical relevances of the city and the river. The project appear symbolically through a totem, which radially and ideally communicates with its historical relevance, which, in turn, connotes it architecturally. In Aulla, however, the project aims to make visibile in the territory the continuous metamorphosis of the river over time. The project focuses mainly on three possible relationships between the human and fluvial environment: floating spaces, terraces above the river, and submersible spaces. The characteristic of submersible spaces is to be conceived and designed to be submerged in flood periods, becoming inaccessible. Their disappearance and reappearance will allow the perception of changes in water level. The floating spaces are designed using the traditionally elements used in the construction of piers in harbor because of the tides. These are elements that float on the water surface, adapting to changes in its level. In some cases these spaces also host vegetation, specifically “Cornus Sanguinea", particularly plant that changes color in periods of the year when the river carries more water. The choice not to exclude any of these types of intervention, but to overlap and intermix, will set up a different space depending on seasonal changes of the river, linked to its flow. The result is a dynamic project, how dynamic it is the river, supporting him in his ever-changing.