Via Savonarola University Complex, Ferrara

Description

The project for the University of Ferrara’s historic complex on Via Savonarola was conceived as the restoration and seismic upgrading of a monumental academic ensemble damaged by the 2012 earthquake. It was divided into two lots: Lot 1 included Palazzo Renata di Francia, Palazzo Strozzi with the Casamento Savonarola, and Palazzo Tassoni-Mirogli; Lot 2 concerned Palazzo Gulinelli, intended to house the new university library. The architectural design developed by Carmassi Studio di Architettura was based on the principle of maximum conservation of the material and spatial identity of each building, together with the enhancement of their long historical stratification. The project sought to transform several adjoining historic palaces into a more coherent and functional university complex without erasing the differences, irregularities and accumulated traces that constituted their architectural value. In Lot 1, the design proposed a compatible structural consolidation strategy, an extensive campaign of uncovering hidden painted and decorated surfaces, and a careful reorganization of circulation, services and technical systems with minimum transformation of the historic fabric. The aim was not to regularize the complex by force, but to make its existing spatial richness usable again through calibrated interventions, renewed connections and the rational relocation of the most invasive technical functions. In Lot 2, Palazzo Gulinelli was rethought as a university library through a rigorously conservative approach. The project preserved the Renaissance character of the palace while introducing the necessary contemporary elements for accessibility, safety and library use: a lift placed in the only position capable of serving all levels, a new safety stair, the reuse of the attic spaces, compact book storage in the service areas and stables, and a light contemporary gallery structure designed as a precise architectural addition in steel, glass and metal roofing. Throughout the palace, decorated vaults, painted walls, timber ceilings, fireplaces and valuable joinery were treated as essential parts of the project, while the architectural survey carried out by the studio revealed a much more irregular and complex spatial condition than first perceived, to be used as a resource rather than corrected. At a later stage of the process, the lead member of the original temporary consortium also supplemented the structural design side with the senior structural consultant Armando Mammino, a structural engineer of established academic and professional standing. This later reinforcement concerned the structural field and should be understood separately from the architectural concept and restoration framework developed by Carmassi Studio di Architettura. The documentation currently available allows a clear distinction between the fate of the architectural-restoration design and the later deadlock of the structural-seismic component, especially with regard to Lot 1. The original joint group, awarded the procedure in 2014, developed the project for both lots through the definitive and executive phases, as shown by the very structure of the tender, by the subsequent procedure for verification and validation of the definitive and executive design, and finally by the delivery of the executive packages for Lot 1 between 2018 and 2019. The public sources currently available do not identify the architectural-restoration design as such as the blocking factor; rather, they place the main point of difficulty in the seismic authorization process and in the structural issues of Lot 1, especially Palazzo Renata di Francia. The institutional statements made public in 2022 explicitly refer to requests for further technical material and to structural problems. It is therefore documentarily sustainable to state that the decisive slowdown of the intervention did not arise on the ground of the architectural conception of the restoration, but within the technical-structural and seismic review of the larger lot. It is equally significant that, after the termination of the relationship with the previous design team and the reassignment of the commission to new external professionals between 2022 and 2023, Lot 1 still appeared, as of 25 March 2026, to be within an authorization and preparatory process not yet concluded in the open sources reviewed. This produces an evident asymmetry: long timings in the structural-seismic phase were imputed to the original team, while the subsequent team has been allowed at least a comparable span of time without any equivalent public criticism or a further replacement. From a legal-administrative point of view, the central point is that, in the field of cultural heritage, the executive stage is not a free and detached redesign, but must develop in conformity with the authorized definitive design, except for substantial variants to be submitted again to the competent bodies. For this reason, unless there exists a wholly replacement definitive design that has been newly approved, the architectural-restoration framework already produced by the original team retains a substantial relevance in the history and possible implementation of the intervention.