Faculty: Paola Giaconia

KSU CAED Florence Student Merit Award for Most Inspiring Work
 

Within recent decades, due to globalization & mass homogenization of the urban environment, the spatial history of many urban contexts has been lost. This generally results in the feeling of placelessness amongst users of these spaces. How can user appropriation begin to relinquish these spaces back to the users in a context like Florence, Italy where culture & history are rooted in the urban fabric? Untitled seeks to amend this fractured history and public-private disconnect by relinquishing the development of the space to the users. By superimposing a grid upon the site, opportunities for user intervention occur in the piazza and the building’s structure. In both cases, the grid structure allows for additions and expansions over time, leaving the piazza unfinished. This welcomes the users to appropriate their spaces. Spaces for gathering for performances, demonstrations, or studying occupy the piazza and the building. The building structure is occupied by building units hosting various programmatic functions. As mentioned, more temporal units are made from the copper panels added over time with the growth of the student body. By raising the mass of the building, the entrance of the building is revealed while drawing in the context of the piazza.