We are in an area of the historical event of the city of Orzionuovi, which has several important historical backgrounds of which include a repeated presence of military architecture, largely responsible for its urban idiosyncrasies. However, it retains only a fraction of its historical legacy. The intervention area is a closed and unstructured terrain not accessible to the city, and belonging to the historic fabric of military character which unfortunately today has no remains. This is therefore, a place where history operates, not as a presence but as a memory.

The proposed project has two objectives, one is that the action should allow proper integration of the area into the urban fabric, and the other is to set it into a position regarding the debate between conservation and innovation, or in other words, to operate consistently with our history without sacrificing the contemporaneity, which is ultimately a key principal of the contest.

In this sense, an intervention is proposed, whose reason lies in the intimate relationship between history and identity, understanding that who we are depends on what we remember, and that is why the project exploits and explores the dialectical relationship between presence and history, knowledge and memory.

This premise translates into a project that tries to raise an exercise in self-reflection on the accumulation process that history involves developing a formal analogy between this temporary stratigraphy and “roots” or anchors that all conscious reality of history must have in relation to the place and its memory, metaphorically highlighting history’s role more than history does itself.

The proposed solution consists in a corner piece, that marks and defines the road intersection mentioned above and it also narrows an urban space in which the topography is the protagonist, and altogether intended to define a place, a qualified territory, generated exclusively as knowledge of the location, of the program and the light. This piece  can be interpreted as a finding of a fragment of a wall, closely related to the site, which has been yielded, releasing the delimiting and enclosed plot space, and that due to its geometry enables on one hand: the passive colonization of pedestrian flow towards its interior, and therefore revitalizing it, and secondly; an architectural promenade on the lookout deck to a deliberately dark depressed plaza, where the access to it is located.

Therefore, the project proposes an analogy between the process of memories (from ignorance to knowledge) and of the journey (from depth and gloom, into the light and clarity). Thus, the building and management of the topography symbolize the history, the difficulty in reaching their access praises it, and the dramatic shadow cast over the access, poetically recalls its constant and inevitable presence.

Department: Architectural Services

Title: Cultural Centre of Orzinuovi

Location: Orzinuovi, Brescia (Italia)

Year: 2000

Area: 1.350 m2

Budget: 877.500 euros

Client: Orzinuovi City Council

Type: Competition

Status: Design | Special Award

Project Architects: Matteo Rossetti + José Antonio Cantó Hidalgo

Proyecto publicado en Concorso di idee per studenti di Universitá di Architettura Europee, Comuni di Orzinuovi 2001