PLACE
Salsomaggiore Terme, Parma

STATUS
Achieved

CHRONOLOGY
1990-1995

CATEGORY
Community buildings, residential, public space, landscape.

Built in an area historically used as a furnace and then abandoned, the planimetric layout pursues the same search for cohesion and harmony as the hilly landscape in which it is inserted, recalling the figures of urban planning in Classical Greece.

The square is the urban heart of the project, surrounded by the slope with its large three-storey courtyard, an invitation space facing the city. Residential, commercial and service functions are located in the square, making it a place for socialising.

The square, named after Paolo Borsellino and Paolo Falcone, takes on its ancient and profound significance as a space for relations capable of hosting events and happenings on an urban scale. A place where the different urban systems intersect and a primary node in the city's form, it represents the unicum emerging from the continuum. Inside, four signs placed at regular intervals complete the design, visualising the relationship between the vertical elements, the "towers" and the landscape.

At its centre stands the "quattroelle" fountain, a sculptural element between memory and symbolism, designed to commemorate the victims of the Mafia. The four "L "s of Liberty, modelled in exposed concrete, are lacerated by iron plates, material icons of the wounds inflicted by the Mafia. Inside a dynamic symbol of suffering, the metal cross rises from the purifying water, intact and visible, to represent sacrifice and the unbreakable nature of the soul.

On one long side the square is contained by a long bastion: following the model of Hellenic cities and due to the attractive orography of the site, the space intended for public services and commerce is conceived as a long promenade, organised on two levels, marked by a sequence of painted concrete partitions, a modern reinterpretation of the ancient colonnade. The commercial function and its longitudinal extension suggested the adoption of a prefabricated and modular construction system. The composition is lightened by a painted steel frame and metal nets announcing the main paths and entrances connecting the building to the square on the upper level.

The main residential buildings face onto the square, designed as towers, a model for buildings with mixed functional uses: the composition is disjointed into two blocks side by side and connected by overhead walkways and vertical signs which break up the façade and lighten the composition. The male and female blocks find their own dimension here. Holes run through the complex, allowing glimpses of the sky and the hills behind. The combination of exposed brick and plaster, materials faithful to the building tradition and to the vocation of an abandoned area which once housed a kiln, also marked by the different treatment of the bevelled edges, further breaks up the façade, lightening it. The two-storey apartments enjoy three privileged views, establishing a dialectical relationship with the aerial terraces. On the ground floor, commercial activities enhance the role of the square.

Towards the hillside, the residential units unfold with a mixed distribution typology: six terraced dwellings at the lateral ends and four in a barycentric position, grouped in a line. The articulation obtained through the translation and gradual retreat of the buildings defines a semicircular layout which ideally recalls and revisits the crescent in the spa town of Bath. The same logic is introduced in the elevation, differentiating the heights of the individual modular blocks that form the building, through a decreasing trend towards the two wings, modelling the profile on the hilly terrain of the site.