Naples. Renzo Piano will redo the entrance space to the Fontanelle cemetery in Rione Sanità. The works will be planned through a process of civic participation.
The entrance area to the Fontanelle cemetery in the Sanità district, in front of the church of Maria Santissima del Carmine and the ossuary that everyone in Naples knows as the “pezzentelle cemetery”.
This is the place that will be redeveloped by Renzo Piano, the great architect who this year also chose Naples, in addition to Bari and Rovigo, for the G124 projects.
Piano, senator for life, chose Naples for his actions of "mending the suburbs" with “the end – says Piano – mainly to transmit values to young people, to give them the opportunity to sow on a specific theme that concerns them closely, linked to their personal topographies. At the end, traces will remain on the territory, drops”.
The location was chosen in concert between the San Gennaro Community Foundation and the Department of Architecture DiARC of the University of Naples Federico II, with the full support of the mayor of Naples Manfredi and Councilor Lieto.
A place in the innermost part of the Rione Sanità, a “suburb of the suburbs” of the historic center of the city.
It is an area of about 300 square meters that involves, in addition to the entrance to the Fontanelle, the churchyard of the Parish of Maria Ss del Carmine and a small garden made available to the public by private individuals. The idea consists in giving dignity to the entrance of the ossuary, now covered by a sheet metal roof, and in connecting the churchyard with the two adjacent areas, the entrance to the Fontanelle cemetery and the green area.
“We would like to create a square for both residents and tourists, illuminated and equipped with spaces in which to stop and entertain”, says Nicola Flora, professor of architecture in Naples.
The place will thus become a square, according to the request made by Renzo Piano to the Architecture professors, Flora and Daniela Buonanno, tutors of the four young Neapolitan architects (Marino Amodio, Giuseppe De Pascale, Orazio Nicodemo and Davide Savoia), recent graduates, whose scholarship is supported by the senator for life.
“To complete and to provide a physical link between the current Mater Dei Metropolitan exit, the future exit at Rione Sanità and this new square – adds Flora – four small rest areas with seats, trees and hedges will also be created in continuity with the strategy that our DiARC group, together with the Fondazione di Comunità San Gennaro, has implemented since 2016 in a series of places such as Piazza Largo Vita and Piazzetta San Severo in Capodimonte”.
The “mending work”, as Renzo Piano calls it, will be planned through a process of civic participation that in Naples sees the decisive support of the Fondazione di Comunità San Gennaro as well as the architect of the Community, Francesca Iarrusso, who, thanks also to the support of Fondazione con il Sud, will support the G124 Napoli group. The design actions, financially supported by private sponsors, will be completed in less than two years and the projects will be presented in October at the Pisa Architecture Biennale.
The first meeting with residents and various Health Associations is scheduled for May 29 in the church of Maria Santissima del Carmine.
With this intervention “will be presented to the citizens – specifies Don Antonio Loffredo, parish priest of the Sanità district – also other projects in the neighborhood, such as the new Materdei alla Sanità subway exit, the CIS project for the arrangement of pedestrian and non-pedestrian areas, the new elevator system that will connect the Basilica del Buon Consiglio in Capodimonte with the part downstream adjacent to the church of San Gennaro extra moenia.
These actions aim to regenerate the ancient Greco-Roman city of Naples by intervening in particular in the ancient area outside the walls of the Rione Sanità, a neighborhood that for over two centuries has been waiting for redemption actions that will free it from the isolation to which the construction of the Sanità bridge by Gioacchino Murat has condemned it”.
Article published on May 18, 2022 - 17:36 pm
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