TARANTO.Mar Piccolo as urban landscaping theatre

The water basins as urban-landscaping theatre represent the most important iconography, both in terms of urban planning, and of the crisis that crosses the general relationship with the natural territory.

The research sought to reflect on the possibility of offering today a theoretical-methodological project alternative to the dynamics connected to the "peripheralization" of maritime borders in Taranto; a figurative project that opposes the expansion of its margins as well as the indistinct "conurbation" process of its landscape. The project moves from the analysis of the factors that contribute to delineate the urban-naturalistic phenomenon of the city of Taranto in its most essential aspects. The project hypothesis therefore starts from considering the signs of water and the terrestril ones, constituting the city and the existing territory. The project incorporates the signs of water through the opening of a new canal on the opposite side of the Ponte Girevole, and through the design of a belvedere on the axis of the second bridge. About terrestrial signs, the frame of the existing cultivation system, along with the grid derived from the nineteenth-century city, formed the basis of a "urban green garden" project, which connects the "Paolo VI" district, with the Mar Piccolo, and therefore with the core city. The project tries to establish its strong recognizability and unity, operating an urban-architectural composition based on a sort of "geometric aesthetic". With regard to functional efficiency, it aims to make the area highly attractive, while maintaining the very low degree of clogging that characterizes it historically. Specifically, the project includes a sea museum, placed in the axis of relationship with the Ponte Girevole; close behind, a laboratory and a system of executive towers useful to decentralize and decongest the city center, activating a condition of organic polycentrism; a boat-building academy, located in the site of the Cantieri Navali Tosi (which recovered their original function and support the educational activities in the academy).