Fair District Urban Project, Bologna

Description

Designed by Massimo Carmassi and Gabriella Carmassi, with Ayse Orbay and Roberto Pasqualetti, the project for the northern periphery and fair district of Bologna was conceived in 1987 for the XVII Triennale di Milano as an urban-scale proposal for the reorganisation of a major contemporary expansion of the city. The collective and civic dimension is central to the scheme, which addresses both open-air urban fragments — streets, squares and parks — and a sequence of public architectures of metropolitan character. The proposal does not require the demolition of existing buildings or the construction of new service infrastructures, but works instead through the use of available open land and the recovery of disused areas and buildings. The new district is organised around Via Stalingrado, which connects the historic centre to the outer ring road and acts as the principal urban reference of the plan. Around this axis, the settlement is structured through the superimposition of urban and architectural grids defining routes, piazzas, green spaces and monumental buildings. The main themes include a grid of court blocks connected to the existing fabric; an urban landscape organised into three distinct types — groves of poplars and cypresses, a large geometric square park, and connective green spaces between the blocks — and a sequence of collective architectures including the great gallery for the Bologna fair, a permanent circus set within the greenery, a circus-shaped office building, a stepped underground garage and the reuse of the former tobacco factory. A new square plays a key civic role by linking the fair gallery to the circus through a porticoed pedestrian route. Within the overall proposal, the fair gallery is the most representative structure: an elongated rectangular figure of great simplicity and measured monumentality, animated by two thick parallel exposed-brick walls punctured by arches and by an essential iron-and-glass roof. Its exceptional scale — spanning the ring road and the railway like a great bridge — gives it a strongly public character, while long scenographic perspectives open towards the lake, which becomes part of the architectural composition itself.