Piazza
of Peace reborn as a living room and crossroads
Redeveloped with safety in mind as a meeting place and the heart of social life in the city. The designers say: "The interventions did not intend to contradict the existing redevelopment works".
Parma, Emilia-Romagna Italy - 19 May 2020
Not only does Piazza della Pace look even more beautiful today, after experiencing the surreal sensations of a prolonged stay in confined spaces, far from meeting places, due to the restrictions caused by the Covid-19, but it also acquires a unique physical and symbolic value, a place for socialising and relating, a visual icon of the community. Silent, metaphysical, immaculate: this is how it appears to the eyes of those who, after weeks of forced isolation, cross it to regain possession of the city and its spaces. A space rediscovered, thanks to the redevelopment carried out by the municipal administration, which incorporates the most modern concepts of the "Italian piazza", understood as a place that brings together history, architecture and culture, revealing itself, due to its size and articulation, as an ideal space to host the social life of the near future.
Six months after its inauguration, these characteristics provide concrete responses to the new needs of citizens to meet, restoring potential and planning to the open space, an active factor in change. The architects of Studio di Architettura Efa of Parma, who conceived and designed the project in close synergy with Parma Infrastrutture Spa, recount the origin and significance of the project within the urban fabric. The work identifies a part of the city in search of its own renewed identity, promoting a spatial interpretation of valorisation, redevelopment and reinterpretation of the existing and of the "urban insolutes", interpreted as significant design resources to improve the usability of spaces and routes. A safe square that makes it comfortable to stay in, facilitating the connection between the strategic places of Parma, and elected as a hinge between the historic monumental city and the main urban nodes that characterise it. "From a technical and structural point of view, Piazza della Pace showed the need for specific maintenance actions aimed at improving the safety and practicability of the paths, new potential for use, and visual and environmental comfort," explains Pietro Chierici, designer of Studio Efa_Esperienze Forme Architettura. "The interventions were not intended to contradict the pre-existing redevelopment works in the context, but to be in continuity with them and to pursue the fundamental principles of consolidating the space for relationships, re-connecting and creating places, and sharing time as an element capable of qualifying rest and reinforcing the action of socialisation," he adds. Among the main elements of the project is the reinforcement of the central route through the area. "The new square will be the renewed entrance to the Pilotta Monumental Complex through the creation of a uniform luserna stone paving placed between the existing trottatoie and laid in parallel strips, so as to propose modularity and scanning of the constituent element of the Pilotta: the brick" concludes Chierici. (continued)