TRIBUTE TO LUIGI GHIRRI

Winner of the 2018 S-Arch Award and Honourable Mention at the 2018 Gubbio Award, the project is part of the urban regeneration programme for the renewal of the public spaces of the city centre of Lugo and of the historical complex of Pavaglione.

TRIBUTE TO LUIGI GHIRRI is the project realised by STARTT + P’ARC after winning the competition for the rehabilitation of the internal courtyard of the Pavaglione, including the redevelopment of the square, the urban relocation of the market areas outside the monument and the design of the urban furniture.
The courtyard of the Pavaglione is a huge 18th-century quadriporticus that was once used to host one of the main markets in Northern Italy linked to the Silk Road. Since the post-war decades, the monumental courtyard has been used as a car park for trucks, serving the fair and the market held in the surrounding public spaces.
The project converts the courtyard into a large enclosed public square, a metaphysical space designed starting with the reflection on the climatic condition taken as an aesthetic value. The physical intervention alludes, in fact, to the uncertain landscape, drawn by the fog and consolidated in the collective imagination, which reveals or hides the human presence.
The square is divided into two main areas: the enchanted garden (the tree-lined space, furnished for everyday socializing) and the mineral plateau (the open space for cultural events and happenings). These areas are separated along the ancient axis of the cardo of the Roman centuriation; new ripples in the plane create a soft space for relax and free time under the trees; a constellation of stone seats – to create intimate spaces for sociability – animates the square.
This set of tracks – contemporary or coming from history – disappears in the night and gives way to surreal light presences emerging in the fog: a tribute to the work of Luigi Ghirri along the Via Emilia. The engravings in the plane become luminescent signs that play together with the lights  in the foggy sky of the north Italian plane, according to the lesson of the Profilo delle nuvole.