The rise of “Villaggio del Sole”, built between 1956 and 1963 in the countryside of Udine, put the focus on the expansion and consequent planning of the north-west area of the city of Udine. In the following 20 years many infrastructures were designed between the city centre and the Rizzi area, such as the University campus, the Stadium and the residential area of Via Mantova.
Particularly in the nineties, there was an urban void left between the new centres in the north-west of the city, which spurred the administration to commission the realisation of an actual link of connection that could offer to the area a collective space. In that historical period of great social and economic euphoria generated from Italia Novanta, rose a public area named “Giardino Piazza Peep ovest-nord” (1989-1992), designed by the Friulian architect Gianugo Polesello, assistant of architect Ignazio Gardella and Giuseppe Samonà at Iuav University in Venice.
This area is now referred to as a park, (Ardito Desio Park, Polesello Park, “Park of concrete”, etc), or as a “cantiere” (construction site), also named “KK”, but at the beginning of the nineties it was considered by most just as a pouring of concrete. Moreover, due to its recent construction, it is not yet considered an heritage to be protected and it has not undergone a process of historicization, despite being an auteur architecture. One of the reasons is to be found in the italian legislation, since the Codice dei beni culturali e del paesaggio allows to protect only public buildings older than seventy years.
And yet, the park is a very unique place and its design needs to be explained and outlined. Are you eager to know about the project? All you have to do is keep reading with curiosity!
The park, conceived as a void which should activate new relations for the city, is nowadays a public space whose edges are well outlined, with defined areas, and functions which are sometimes identifiable, sometimes left to chance. Overall, the aim of architect Polesello was to convey formal clarity through shapes that could be familiar to every inhabitant and that could help orienting. For this reason, inside the park we find well defined spaces, each with a name attributed in the project as it follows:
- the great “covered-square”, with a coverage of trusses and transparent material, sustained on two sides by a wall of reinforced concrete, with huge openings that allow to transit: nowadays it is an area which is considered suitable for skateboarding and dance, thanks to the characteristics of the paving material;
- then we find two big bleachers. One is oriented towards Val d’Arzino street, separated from it by a wide paved clearing and sided by what was originally intended to be a “waterfall fountain”. The other, positioned further south, seems to recall a “spontaneous theatre”, so much so that in the tales collected with the project many have memories of it as the place where the World Football Cup was projected;
- the largest part of the “equipped public garden” is allocated to a green area, confined by neat rows of trees which underline its perfectly squared plant and separate the “inside”, dedicated to the kids’ playground, from the “outside”;
- at the outskirts we find, like some sort of entries, the place designed for the “wings” and the two “pavilions”, one is squared and the other is triangular. They are positioned as the point of departure and the point of arrival of a pedestrian paved path which splits the green square in half. The squared pavilion accommodates now a “bowl”, namely an area dedicated to the stunts and tricks of its visitors, by skate, BMX or scooter;
- all of the constitutive elements of the park are joined by pergola porches, designed as paved paths at the ground level or either elevated walkways of steel, sustained by reinforced concrete columns now covered in creepers.
Picture from the book Gianugo Polesello: architetture, 1960-1992, edited by M. Zardini and M. Cacciari, Electa, 1993.
The concept of void is dear to Polesello for his way of conceiving the city also through these spaces of absence of material architecture. It fills the place with meaning, along with pure geometrical shapes and the disposition of pillars and diving walls. These allow several functions to be allocated to precise spaces, following a clear design, geometrically refined, recalling the shapes of circles, squares and rectangles.
Today the park is a ductile place, thanks to its “free” design, where exceptional uses and practices of the city converge. Here the informal city finds an expression through art, colours, body and music and allows to win back those places which are apparently not too functional and accessible, enriching them with meaning.
The journey of valorisation chosen by the project “L’architettura conquistata” is based on the activation of a cognitive path to comprehend and appreciate an architecture which is aesthetically, socially and functionally important: it will be a project focused on a shared construction of generative meaning, of new acquaintances and new stimula for the people involved.
Picture taken from the book Gianugo Polesello : architetture, 1960-1992, edited by M. Zardini and M. Cacciari, Electa,1993