Modulo City Boat

City boat' module is part of a strategy of little infrastructural interventions for passengers and port visitors realized by Studio 4 in the area around Genoa harbour New Ferry Terminal: here a layer of new service buildings (containing stairs, lifts, ticket checks, toilettes etc) is superposed, as in Bernard Tschumi's La Villette Park in Paris, over an existing network of risen pedestrian walkways between station and ships. The new building will become the 'city boat' first stop, a starting point to visit port attractions like Renzo Piano's Expo Area or the International Boats Fair. A sequence of five tall steel frames ( 200 mm steel H beams), wrapped in a light steel and glass structure cantilevered on both sides, contains a concrete staircase and a panoramic lift. Seven rows of big tempered glasses (dimension: 1,00 x 2,60 x 0,02 metres) are hung on the main structure by 'L' shaped steel profiles: in order to enhance horizontality of the façade, only long sides of glazed plates are clamped by metal frames. The shimmering screen is crossed by a new 40 metres long foot bridge, a blue resin carpet decorated with super flowers as a pop art painting, linking the main station with the transparent box and the docks.

The red diagonals of a strip of long stairs are clearly to be seen through the clear glass. The intentional use of a bold colour palette (red for the concrete staircase, sky blue with 'oversized' white, yellow, red and blue floreal drawings for the footbridge pavement) has the purpose to break down the potentially raw nature of the building, while providing a colour code for its different parts.

Translucent structure enables to understand immediately the function of the building and, by night, transforms it in a shining landmark in the docks neglected area: as Luna Park described in Rem Koolhaas 'Delirious New York' or Federico Fellini's magic images of the REX transatlantico, electric light gives the building a fourth dimension and acts as an architecture duplicator. 'Neoplastic' and 'constructivist' architectural language, macrographics information like advertising billboards or pop art paintings, neon lights used in a Dan Flavin way, transform the building in a clear and strong presence in the chaotic area of the harbour piers.