Stefano Boeri has revealed the design of a circular elevated walkway that will be built below Renzo Piano’s replacement for the collapsed Morandi Bridge in Genoa, Italy. Conceived by his studio Stefano Boeri Architect, in collaboration with Metrogramma and Inside Outside, the walkway forms part of the Polcevera Park and The Red Circle masterplan, which has been designed to “breathe new life” into the landscape that is recovering from the Morandi Bridge collapse in 2018.
The Red Steel Circle – a symbolic element and embodiment of the “urban sewing” of the two sides of the valley – develops changing its nature: it becomes a walkway, a raised square, an access and exit ramp, a corridor between the buildings or an underground path and connects all the different territories, highlighting the great urban botanical park: the Polcevera Park. A new regenerated site that will run under the new bridge, designed by Renzo Piano to replace the Morandi Bridge that mostly collapsed in August 2018 causing a tragic accident and several deaths.
The Red Steel Circle is first and foremost a relationship-building structure: it is a bike-pedestrian road 1570 meters long, 6 meters wide and 250 meters radius, equipped with a 120-meter-high Wind Tower for the production and distribution of renewable energy that connects the district just in front of the new station. The latter houses a system of wind turbines and belongs, like the Red Circle, to the new energy network of Polcevera created thanks to the contribution of the German firm Transsolar.
The Red Circle is part of a sustainable mobility grid where bike and pedestrian paths, smart mobility lanes, shared surfaces and intelligent parking spaces all come together inside a strategy developed with MIC | Mobility in Chain, with the goal of creating a safe public space on a human scale.
The Polcevera Park, basically consists of a system of parks that gather in the overall vision the variety of plants and trees typical of the Mediterranean basin, designed by Inside Outside | Petra Blaisse and built with the contribution of agronomist and landscape designer Laura Gatti and geologist Secondo Antonio Accotto.
In the heart of the Park stands Genova in the wood: an art installation featuring 43 trees, designed by artist Luca Vitone, dedicated to the memory of the victims of the suddenly collapsed Morandi bridge as well as to the timeless memory of the pain and faults of mankind but, at the same time, a symbol of the indomitable strength of a city.
The Parco del Polcevera will become a new centre: all around it, the district will be reborn, understood as a community of life, relationships and exchanges. The BIC buildings in the Green Factory area, the New Forts and the ex Mercato Ovaivicolo become new hubs of productivity and innovation, essential ingredients for a sustainable rebirth also from the economic-financial point of view as studied in depth by H&A Associati.
“The Red Circle, the Tower, the World Buildings, and the Polcevera Park with its vital chromatic and botanical variety will act as Genoa’s welcome to the passers-by of the future,” says Stefano Boeri.“A welcome to the world that crosses it and reaches Genoa from a network of infrastructure that stretches from east to west connecting Italy to Europe, parks perched on vertical walls, workers and noblewomen, singers-poets and naval engineers. A Superb City, even though it is afflicted by poignant melancholy; beautiful, even if in the harshness of its everlasting contradictions. A city of steel and sea, sculpted by wind and tragedy, but always able to stand tall.”