Piazza Maggiore
Martinengo, Bergamo, Italy
General objectives of this project can be summarised in three essential points: the remediation and redevelopment of an important urban parcel of the old town centre of Martinengo, the redesign of the façades facing the Piazza Maggiore and the requalification of its porticoes.
The improved and fairer solution was achieved by establishing a relation between the public and private sectors in a design strategy agreed upon through participation, with appropriate and adequate interventions aiming to promote urban restoration of the old town centre.
The pre-established objectives are achieved by restoration of the building complex represented by the buildings of the area facing the Piazza Maggiore, through interventions of building fabric restoration, structural consolidation, a revision of public health services and attribution of diversified building uses. Within the urban parcel in question the project actually foresees a co- presence of interventions with diverse building uses.
I believe that a greater level of profitability and liveability of the urban parcel and, more generally, of the historic centre, can be pursued through the integration of a plurality of building uses and compatible functions.
Within the scope of the general intervention of restoration of the urban scene in Piazza Maggiore, a construction of a new portico is planned to complete the existing portico.
The composition of porticoes of the Martinengo historic centre is configured as an articulated system of spaces connecting private and public life, wherein the flows of pedestrians, the short stops at bars and shops, the building accesses and groups of window-shopping passers-by are all surrounded by a geometric articulation of brick arches with wooden ceilings and by walls articulated by alluring shop windows and access driveway portals.
The porticoes are ancient structures that serve religious, political, commercial and civil necessities, as elements of integration between the architecture and the garden and, as a composition of porticoes, to delimit an enclosed space. From this it appears evident that the function of porticoes goes beyond being a shelter from the elements, a protection from traffic, a pleasant place for a walk or a short repose; it also acquires a formal value, not only with regard to a single building but rather the entire old town centre.
These covered streets connect and spatially define the commercial centrality of the historic Martinengo.
Project
Massimiliano Gamba
Rendering
Giovanni Ginoulhiac
Dimensional data
Status quo: volume = 4,598 m3
Status quo: gross area = 1,443 m2
Final arrangement: volume = 6,690 m3
Final arrangement: gross area = 2,023 m2
Chronology
Project: 2008
