Landscape design
2024 Piazza Vittorio Veneto and the Cascine Park
Vittorio Veneto Square is part of the system of avenues, “parterre” and “square” that formed a seamless unicum in Giuseppe Poggi’s original project for Florence as Capital in 1865. A radical urban change of Florence that has left an indelible mark even on the current urban conformation of the city. For Poggi, the project for this square represented the rediscovered connection between the historic Cascine Park of Medici origin and the new urban transformations of Florence as Capital. Further and subsequent transformations have altered and degraded the original design of the square over time. The project proposes a “mending” of the urban forms and a relocation of urban identities interpreted in a contemporary key, but with the maintenance of the main historical signs.
WHERE
Municipality of Florence – Province of Florence – Tuscany Region – Italy
WHEN
2017. Feasibility study, approved by Deliberation of the Municipal Board n. 2017/G/00669 of 29/12/17
2018-2022. Preliminary Technical and Economic Feasibility Project (PFTE) approved on 09/03/2022 by the Superintendence of Archaeology, Fine Arts and Landscape for the metropolitan city of Florence and the provinces of Pistoia and Prato
2023-2024. Final and executive design of the green areas and urban design for the “Redevelopment of Piazza Vittorio Veneto and surrounding areas (City Plan)”
WHO
Client/Municipality of Florence, Direction New Infrastructures and Mobility, Ing. Vincenzo Tartaglia Director New Infrastructures and Mobility, RUP Ing. Giuseppe Carone Technical Manager responsible for the Mobility and Cycle Paths Planning Service
Designers Feasibility study, Technical and economic feasibility project/ Prof. Arch. Lorenzo Vallerini, in collaboration with Arch. Lorenzo Nofroni – Archlandstudio
Designers Final and Executive Project / Municipality of Florence, Ing. Andrea Tonelli (CSP), Ing. Elena Sulis Sato, Arch. Francesca Tomassini, Ing. Elisa Velenosi
Designers Final and Executive Project green areas and urban design/ Prof. Arch. Lorenzo Vallerini, in collaboration with Arch. Lorenzo Nofroni, Arch. Pietro Galli, Dott.Agr. Ghita Fabbri – Archlandstudio
Lighting designers/ Arch. Claudio Vallario, SILFI SpA, Florence
WHAT
The total surface area is 36,975 m2. – Total costs €4,500,000.00 (2024) – The entire area subject to Landscape and Architectural (or Monumental) Constraints.
The project starts from the historical analysis and transformation of the places (from the nineteenth-century projects by Giuseppe Poggi for “Firenze Capitale” until to today). Faced with the loss of the original nineteenth-century identities, the new road system-parking and tram lines, the road axis of Rosselli Avenue moves and widens to include the tram lines to find the alignments of the rows of trees on the sides of the new public space. The new Piazza Vittorio Veneto is located on the orthogonal axis to Rosselli Avenue, the one along the Vittorio Veneto Square/Park and Corso Italia Street/Urban center direction and proposes the original conformation of the gate of the Cascine Park, with a large oval space intended for pedestrian and cycle use only and defined by a large green perimeter strip expanded with three new rows and with the maintenance of the existing five large Cedars. The new vegetation of the project, as an increase in biodiversity, is composed of 134 maintained trees, 84 new trees and 780 ml. new hedges. The entire area will be completed with a new lighting system and furnishings consistent with the historical recovery of the area. An altimetric connection and arrangement of the pedestrian surfaces completes the axis that reconnects to the overpass and then to the two original oval tree-lined flowerbeds towards the urban side of Corso Italia recovered in their original form (relocating the parking lots currently present). Also on the front towards the Arno, the areas intended for parking are being reorganized, making them more functional and giving more space to pedestrian spaces.
Throughout the area, that role of hinge between the city and the park that has been lost over time is being restored, attempting to give an “urban decorum” to this important part of the city, that has to become a new urban gateway and hub for the public transport system (trams and extra-urban buses).
