Rosarno colonial city

The project investigates a complex territorial reality, where the availability of spaces, buildings and areas to be reconverted and reused is a widespread condition, an important resource to take charge of, which prefigures possible actions capable of enhancing the existing, recovering ancient traces and rethinking relationships with nature.

The investigation focuses on the legacy left by the Greek colony, which still persists today in the archaeological park, in the urban texture of the Case Nuove district and in contemporary public spaces. The design strategy considers the existing, the community and the heritage of the places as the main force for the regeneration of the spaces. It defines a continuous pace to implement a large-scale design action with a series of punctuality capable of activating relationships for regeneration, establishes a real connection between the urban and physical limits of the territory and reinterprets the pre-existing as an opportunity for public space and of reappropriation of the identity of the places to which the visible traces of the ancient Medma refer. Starting from the analyzes conducted on the community and on the existing buildings in the park area, the fabric is reinterpreted as a hinge between the neighborhood and the agricultural territory of the Piana. Based on these assumptions, through a series of grafts, additions and new devices that reactivate the existing one, the project develops a catalog of interventions, arranged according to an orthogonal grid deriving from the agricultural one, which follows the ancient traces, and determine a series of areas entrusted to thematic functions linked by a polylinear connective path, to favor a complex use program in order to inhabit, cultivate and discover the park. The re-functionalization of the museum and the nearby school with the creation of a cultural-hub and a community-hub becomes the key element for the regeneration, conceived as an experimental and innovative architecture, generated by a process of selective demolition of some parts the pre-existing buildings and the addition of new volumes that favor a new way of experiencing the spaces, connected by the external central courtyard, the fulcrum of the project, and a counter-façade system that generates a new permeability in the building, supporting new public functions and services for the community, as well as a continuity and sense of civilization throughout the complex.