Contrary motion. From countryside to city, from city to countryside

Within the general strategy of the projects coordinated by Sandro Rolla and Marina Tornatora, the project of “Land” thematic pavilion is settled on the edge of Piacenza south expansion. The main idea is that, operating by meaningful fragments, the specific intervention is able to generate long term and wide-range transformations, overcrossing the specific area limits and having an effect on a territory scale. It focuses on the main issue of the peri-urban space, whose ambiguity has been at the center of contemporary architectural debate. This is approached by the design of the soil, in order to tie up areas of the city and make them the enhancement key of the future urban development. The project chooses to catch the nature of the place, both urban, because it holds the last built fringes and crossed by several infrastructural traces, and rural, as a fragment of a rural life still alive in the close proximity. It chooses to operate like a musical contrary motion, where one of the two melodic lines moves up, and the other moves down: the project defines a crossing flux attracted from the countryside and, conversely, it comes back towards the city, tracing a bike and pedestrian path; proceeding from and towards the farmstead, it excavates the ground and gets the internal courtyard from a lower level, open air.