COMUNANZA OF THE FUTURE
The Municipal Administration of Comunanza and Mayor Alvaro Cesaroni have expressed their intention to rehabilitate the buildings, both residential and commercial, built along Piazza 4 Novembre and overlooking the Aso River.
For this purpose, our company, Pellegrini Giardini, was asked to collaborate, given our experience in designing, executing, and restoring large urban works and industrial sites. We approached the matter with great interest.
The Site
The buildings in the area under study, likely constructed between the late 1960s and the 1990s, represent a typical example of rough, unstructured construction, lacking any stylistic coherence, in some cases bordering on dilapidation. Unfinished walls, concrete elements visibly degraded by time and weather, and additions made with little regard for basic construction principles. A questionable concrete intervention (complete with a circular terrace) on the building housing the Municipal Administration contrasts sharply with the ancient walls of the historic center on the other side of the Aso River, which is the town’s true pride. These historical structures have been mostly well-restored, and other interesting restoration projects are well underway.
Project Principles
Sources of inspiration include, among others, “The EU designs the green cities of the future” and, specifically, the LIFE LUGO+BIODINAMICO project (Lugo, Spain), the TOUR & TAXIS restoration project (Brussels, Belgium), THE HIGH LINE NYC (New York, USA), and CONDOMINIO 25 VERDE (Turin, Italy).
LIFE LUGO+BIODINAMICO
TOUR E TAXIS
THE HIGH LINE NYC
CONDOMINIO 25 VERDE
The basic concepts of the COMUNANZA OF THE FUTURE project are:
- Use of biodynamic materials
- Extensive use of vertical gardens
- A modern, structured, and instantly recognizable layout for the intervention area
- Benefits for the residents (building rehabilitation, thermal improvement, CO2 absorption, reduction of fine dust)
- Functional restoration of the riverbanks
- A unique tourist attraction
The Project
The buildings will be treated in four different ways:
- Some will be clad with wooden panels (preferably locally sourced).
- Others will be fully covered with large vertical garden sections.
- Some will simply be re-plastered and painted in a uniform color for the entire intervention area.
- Brick buildings with acceptable craftsmanship will be cleaned, except for the windows, which will be replaced in all buildings with uniform models in the same color.
On the side of the historic district bridge, the project plans to install a steel staircase allowing citizens and tourists to access the riverbank. Here, in addition to safety railings, a “flower walk” inspired by The High Line NYC will be created, connecting to a steel overlook suspended over the river. This will be located at the parking lot between Piazza IV Novembre and Via Trento.
THE VERTICAL GARDEN
Modern society increasingly favors the architecture-nature combination over architecture-concrete. This is a fact. New structures like Boeri’s Vertical Forest and those inspired by it are now icons of this new trend worldwide. But these are new buildings, specifically designed. How do we apply this to existing structures?
The answer came decades ago from a French biologist, Patrick Blanc. Born in Paris in 1953, Blanc is universally considered the inventor of the modern green wall. However, Blanc is primarily a scientist, a researcher, and an explorer of nature. After earning his degree and PhD in Natural Sciences in 1979, Blanc began working as a researcher specializing in tropical plants, participating in numerous scientific expeditions.
It was from closely observing pristine areas, tropical rainforests, and high-altitude environments that Patrick drew inspiration for his famous “Mur Végétal.” He noticed that vegetation grew spontaneously and vigorously in caves and near waterfalls, even with little substrate. All that was needed was humidity, CO2, and a bit of light. The green façade of the Quai Branly Museum in 2005 brought Blanc international fame.
Designed by French architect Jean Nouvel, the museum features an extraordinary series of green installations, including vertical walls designed by Blanc on the large external façade. On an 800-square-meter surface, Patrick utilized the inherent flexibility of the “Mur Végétal” system to adapt to the architecture “like a foot in a shoe.” The living wall hosts about 150,000 plants from 150 different species – mostly from Europe, North America, China, Japan, Chile, and South Africa – to achieve a high level of biodiversity. Blanc avoided using tropical plants unsuitable for the north-facing wall in Paris’s climate but did plant them on several indoor green walls within the museum offices.
So, can a vertical garden be done both outside and inside? The answer is yes! The green wall of the CaixaForum in Madrid, built in 2008, is probably one of Patrick Blanc’s most well-known projects. Composed of about 15,000 plants from 250 species, the 600-square-meter vertical garden was designed to provide relief during Madrid’s hot summer climate. Therefore, the plants were carefully selected to suit the city’s specific climate, situated 670 meters above sea level, with very hot summers and particularly cold winters.
A particularly significant project is the installation that transformed the anonymous façade of a building in the suburbs of Paris into a “flaming green space.” The Oasis d’Aboukir (named after the Rue d’Aboukir where it is located) demonstrates how nature can significantly improve the quality of urban space. This project perfectly illustrates how a precise scheme can be technically created on a preliminary geometric grid, where each chosen plant is carefully positioned in its dedicated area to achieve an effect of dynamism and movement thanks to the diagonal arrangement.
There is much discussion on how urban forests and greenery, in general, will help create cooler and healthier cities in the coming decades. Due to climate change, urban temperatures will rise, causing real heatwaves. Vertical gardens are perfect for narrow streets and avenues, as they can significantly lower temperatures, reducing them by 2° to 8°C. In principle, Vertical Greenery offers both environmental and climatic benefits. It contributes to the creation of a microclimate that generates humidity, filters fine dust (the notorious PM10), significantly reduces noise pollution, purifies the air by removing CO2 from the atmosphere and emitting O2, provides solar shading through leaf canopy, dramatically reducing summer energy consumption caused by air conditioning units, and offers protection from wind and, partially, from winter cold. From a wildlife perspective, Vertical Greenery protects biodiversity by creating biological habitats.
The numerous plant species distributed along the façades create a true ecosystem capable of attracting birds and insects, “becoming an urban sensor for the spontaneous recolonization of plant and animal life in the city.”
Project Video⇓