Total area: 30 hectares (1 hectare = 2,471 acres)
Building area: 140,000 square meters (1 square meter = 10.76 square feet)
Residential buildings: 950 units, multifamily-homes - 360 units, single family homes - 89,000 mg
Commercial building and services: 24,000 mq
Hotels and restaurant: 10,000 mq
Public buildings: 17,000 mq
Homes density: 22 homes per hectare
Public parking places: n. 1.300
Urban park: 11 hectares

• to use and to recover areas in disuse, in order to minimize the consumption of virgin land.

• to lead the city toward a polycentric territorial-urban position and thus increase the value of the suburbs by creating and strengthening new centers, generating an integrated system of polarities between the consolidated historic city and the metro area.

The project site is north of the hystorical city, beyond the railway track bundle of the central station within the first periferal circle of Bologna, in an area at the edge of the nineteenth-century district called Bolognina, close behind of Villa Angeletti urban park and Canale Navile. It is a dismantled area, where once the fruit and vegetable market was located; only part of the original structure of this market is planned to stay, including the entrance building, with the tower (1936-39) and the roof used for goods storage (1955-60, probably built according to a project by PierLuigi Nervi). The area has a strategic strong value, due to the huge real estate public property (about the 48% of the total area) and constitutes a unique town planning resource. It could be used to spur urban re-qualification, to build new centers for the district, and to join two parts of the city divided by the railway tracks.

The choice to site, in the former fruit and vegetable market area, the new headquarters of the municipal office and to convert the entire area into a mix of public and private functions (residential, commercial, tertiary services) follows the logic of decentralizing important public functions towards peripheral areas and confirms the anti-zoning criteria as guidelines for town planning.

The project

The area is central with respect to the infrastructure plan and to the consolidated city:

• the south boundary will be partially occupied by the new high velocity station

• the west boundary foresees an urban axis for the traffic flowing from the intermediate ring to the ring-road avenues of the historical centre of the town

• the north boundary is the intermediate road ring

• the east boundary constitutes the real connecting part between the district and its urban right-angled network

The negative effects of the high-speed road traffic demands the protection of the area along the west and north boundaries: in the first case, a 1.2 km long artificial embankment, acts as an acoustic barrier and is used as an elevated bike/pedestrian track; in the second case, the linear multi-family residential building has a no-window wall turning towards the road while all the doors and the windows look at the park. The wall becomes deformed and is interrupted at the north road axis of the district to allow residents to see and enjoy the park and to avoid making the residential site a walled up town.

On the contrary, the south and east boundaries are "permeable"; the hotels and the multi-story public parking, close to the railway station, face the south boundary; the headquarters of the municipal offices and the existing roof, large indoor and outdoor public space, the new agora’ of the district, face the west urban road.

The area is crossed by three boulevards, continuation of the nineteenth-century axis. The boulevards are typically urban roads, which stores and first-floor public services, large and specialized buildings face.

At right angles of the boulevards there are short-distance pedestrian tracks, between the single-family residential units; these spaces are characterized by the typical sizes of the hystoric city. Buildings alternate with the open space of the park. These three different urban dimensions are repeated at short distance, therefore they are easily used. The acoustic embarkment connects the new green spaces of the existing park, beyond the Canale Navile.

The separation of the mobility vectors at the area center is guaranteed by a natural-artificial space which at the superior level connects the two parts of the park through a pedestrian track, while the inferior level allows the crossing and the entrance of the cars to the public parking. The two levels are connected with different activities (restaurants, stores and shopping centers). This complex system represents one of the central urban positions of the new site. Among the other positions are: north-side, the elementary school conceived as a one-story building the roof of which is integral part of the park; the old entrance to the market; the office of the local Health Care assistance, close to the south boulevard.

The proposal has tried to spread over the area, public and private aggregation centers trying to avoid compartmentalization of the functions and their physical locations, widening the town in the park and the park in the town. Particular attention has been given to the planning of open public spaces, symbolically represented by the indoor square of the roof , according to a hierarchy of potential uses (park, boulevard, nearby street).

The arrangement of the new buildings has been studied in such way as to maintain visual preferential channels capable of showing always some historical emergencies, typical of the urban environment (two towers, S. Luca basilica, the eighteenth-century Aldini villa), in order to make the project contestual to the urban contour.

The Mercato Navile project is the result of the superimposition of different levels (activities, park, mobility structures) which, co-existing, reach a critical and interesting density, giving this city the degree of complexity that makes it urban. Priority choice was made to activate a radical mixture of scale, use assignement, articulation of open spaces; in addition the project is based on simultaneousness and on the possibility of easy connections. These superimpositions attempt to spurr the framework for the social integration and to guarantee urban services, for the continuous and spread presence of human beings.

The planning has aimed at pursueing objectives of sustainable urban , economic, and enviromental development, by using direct technologies and town-planning principles in order to carry out a part of city socially sustainable and energy compatible with available resources. The pla tries new criteria of intervention in the planning of public-private spaces, in the management of the energy and environment resources aiming at obtaining their balanced, sustainable and advantegeous use. Similar criteria were applied to the residential and commercial offer.

1. Differential residential offer

The plan suggests different type of residential buildings to satisfy a demand more and more flexible and fluctuating, to search for solutions adequate to every social class. The residential models refer to: high, medium, and low density; common residences for students and seniors and studios.

The typical minimal unity of the plan, represented by Blocco Urbano Attuativo, is repeated along the road axis and is spaced out with specialized buildings. The high density linear buildings belong to this minimal unity, having the first floor for service activities, and the low density single-family units.

2. Homogeneous density

The plan call for the distribution of buildings, green and public spaces all over the area. The "fullness" of the buildings alternates with the "emptyness" of the park, according to a use hierarchy which allows everybody to enjoy, by creating only one neighborhood. The connection between the buildings is obtained with the superimposition of a thick network of public spaces (park, linear tracks along boulevards), and of pivate spaces of public use (tracks between low density units).

3. Mobility levels

The road traffic is subdivided into three main lines (boulevards facing tertiary and commercial activities), some secondary lines (pedestrian areas, between low density residences, flowing into the park), and bike and pedestrian tracks in the park.

4. Parking system

All private parking lots are placed underground, while public parking is concentrated in strategic areas at the entrance and in the center of the site, along the main traffic lines, contained in multi-story building servicing the headquarters of municipal offices and the Alta Velocita’ train station

5. Functional mix

The anti-zoning guideline has been followed consisting of differences density: the uses are distributed all over the site in order to create complex and multi-function urban spaces where it would be possible to build direct connections within the residential network. The public activities (elementary school, old market entrance, tertiary services, municipal health offices) are direct elements which break the residential urban network, deepen its complexity degree and make specialized its use.

6. Environment

From the urban to the building scale, obtaining a global positive energy balance has been the priority of the planning, through passive and active methods of using energy resources such as:

• Orientation and shading have been studied to minimize the buildings shadows. The high density buildings (9 floors above the ground) are oriented towards north-south, sidelong the prevalent wind. The residential units are acing both sides, have opening systems to allow the natural transversal ventilation in summer and the heat accumulation in winter.
  The south front is a complex system which superimposes the glass surfaces with a structure made of brise soleil for summer shading, a support of photovoltaic panels and a visual protecting shield towards the low density residences, in order to avoid winter time shading.

• The primary technological net is made of a mesh of technological undergroung passages connected with a cogeneration unit for the combined production of heat and electricity (the unit size takes into consideration the solar energy recovered by the single residential building). All the building systems are built with external walls, the superficial mass of which enables thermal inertia as a function of summer climate and winter energy saving.

• Utilization of solar panels, on the covering and on some of public buildings, for the production of hot water.

• Utilization of photovoltaic panels on the southern facade of high density building

• Radical reduction of impermeable ground as compared to the permeable one ( impermeable surface: present 98%, project 60%).

• Water recycle: in the park and below the area there is a (esondabile) basin, a (laminazione) tank for the rainwater coming from pedestrian surfaces and covering. The rainwater is collected into two storage tanks and re-used for irrigating the public green spaces. The (laminazione) tank has a cooling function and controls the water regimen.

• An eqauality equation has been established in the balance of the land resource, between the carried and dug ground.

• Acoustic pollution control through the correct siting of every control type as to the sound source and, where necessary, through the interposition of infrasctructures-barriers.