L'Università nella città. Parigi e il quartiere Masséna Rive Gauche

The main topic of this abstract takes into the emblematic aspects of the ambitious plan of transformation Rive Gauche, operating in Paris, and analyses the reasons why such as universities facilities has been reintroduced in the city, inverting the main practise now diffused in many European and Italian cities, which is to locate university poles far away from city centres. The site Masséna Rive Gauche, in the east of Paris, is occupied by the bundle of the external railroads of the Gare d’Austerliz. Even when standing as a not interesting place, marked by hard urban fractures, the site has shown great potentialities of transformation for its central location, and for longing the Seine forehead. If the construction of the Grande Bibliothèque has conferred to this part of Paris an indispensable monumental reference for the future city development, the choice to bring together new programs for cultural lodgings, offices, facilities and housing, has allowed to transfer in this place also a new university pole destined to the Université Paris VII Denis-Diderot. The transformation of the eastern Paris appears today emblematic for the contribution offered to the quality of urban environment, and for the influence those skills will have on further metropolitan plans to come.