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Cerreto Guidi Public Square

This is a project by msX2 and it is located at Cerreto Guidi, Firenze, Italy. Project's program: Public aquare. There are five images for Cerreto Guidi Public Square.

: © Michele Simonetti

Project details

Project name: Cerreto Guidi Public Square
Location: Cerreto Guidi, Firenze, Italy
Program: Public aquare
Year: Completion: 2011
More details: Cost of Construction: 50,000 €
Client: Comune di Cerreto Guidi
Project by: msX2
Team: Principal Designers: Marco Stacchini, Michele Simonetti

Project images

Designer's statement

The site plan represents a neuralgic point in Cerreto Guidi urban tissue, being the main pedestrian (and even vehicular) access point to the historical centre ring: in the project is concealed an intervention strategy leading to the creation of a relational network between the outstanding points distinguishing the historical Cerreto heritage. The new public square is meant to be a representative urban, cultural and social refurbishment element located in the middle of all the chaotic fluxes, in order to give the relational public life a clear and suitable structure and a place where to develop and settle down.

The design goal stems from a qualitative site analysis, that underlined an advance social disintegration level, and aims to characterize this new public space as an urban entrance, a door to the ancient urban tissue trying to modify the pedestrian fluxes without changing the volumetric aspects of the environment. The design process enlightened the chance to obtain the results using traditional and historical constructive elements and materials, most of all local stone called Pietra Serena, used in the entire ancient tissue as a public space pavement. That continuity choice led to create, an homogeneous ground floor plan, where some contemporaneous linear seating create a boundary between pedestrian and vehicular area (even distinguishing safe and unsafe areas) in order to find a new identity for the square based on discrete lexical signs, perfectly integrated with the historical atmosphere but clearly and outstanding actualizing it all in a more up-to-date architectonic language.

The light design is the other main strategy used to create a visual network through the square. Two pedestrian linear ground floor lights paths cross the area, leading to and coming from the main attraction points in the urban tissue, gathering to the centre of the new square and rising into two linear tall diffuse lighting elements recognized as kind of visual night time landmarks that aim to spot the lights on the new public element as a node of fluxes and relations.