status:
Architecture and Urban development competition – By invitation
year:
2020
place:
Locarno, Switzerland
client:
City of Locarno
with:
l’AUC
area:
43.000 m²
description:
Locarno is a city inscribed in a very rich natural and geographical context: it lies on a basin protected by a crown of mountains, it overlooks Lake Maggiore and develops on the left side of the mouth of the Maggia. The territorial transformations of the last 500 years have meant that Locarno, as we know it today, is a city built on two distinct geological and morphological areas: the ancient city, the medieval one, and the new city, with a nineteenth-century layout. Between the two, Piazza Grande is a space resulting from the meeting of the two parts of the city.
A moment in which it is necessary to find a link between the new and the old, between the organic and the geometric. By making opposites co-exist, summarized in the space of Piazza Grande and its projections, Locarno will reconfigure itself as a large coherent and continuous public space.
From the old city, a long series of public spaces and historic buildings, including Piazza Sant’Antonio, Piazza San Francesco, Parco Balli, reconnect with this great figure through an intense network of pedestrian streets. Similarly, from the new city, large parks and establishments (the Boscono Isolino, the Lido, the sports field) are projected into the historic center through the large avenues. This two-way gaze, once horizontal, from the river to the lake, once vertical, from the upper city to the lower city, is fundamental for us to reconstitute a relationship of continuity between all the areas of Locarno and its main center of urban life.
images, from top to bottom:
1. Masterplan, Public spaces system
2. Plan, Largo Zorzi and Giardini Rusca
3. Perspective of Giardini Pioda towards the theatre and the lake
4. Perspective of Largo Zorzi towards Piazza Grande
5. Locarno Flower Festival Vintage postcards
6. Trachycarpus fortunei palm tree photographed in the city of Locarno
7. Trachycarpus fortunei photographed in the spontaneous state as a naturalized exotic plant in the city
