Plans for the Historic Centre of Isola Vicentina, Italy Issues with Urban Morphology
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Civil Engineering and Architecture 2(1): 42-51, 2014 http://www.hrpub.org DOI: 10.13189/cea.2014.020105 Plans for the Historic Centre of Isola Vicentina, Italy Issues with Urban Morphology Enrico Pietrogrande*, Adriano Rabacchin, Alessandro Dalla Caneva Department of Civil, Environmental and Architectural Engineering, University of Padova, 35131 Padova, via Marzolo 9, Italy *Corresponding Author: [email protected] Copyright © 2014 Horizon Research Publishing All rights reserved. Abstract The work concerns the recomposition of public coworkers Adriano Rabacchin and Alessandro Dalla Caneva, spaces in the historic centre of Isola Vicentina, an ancient academic year of 2012-13) we adopted a method to town near Vicenza, that presents significant alterations recompose the unresolved condition of this public space occurred during last century. It is part of a more general based on analyzing the history of the town to understand its research about the urban structure in the little cities of urban morphology. This is an indispensable tool in Veneto region, in the North-East of Italy. The method discovering the underlying reasons for the development of adopted is based on studying the history of the place to the urban structure, which forms an indelible reminder made understand the urban morphology of it. The physical in the image of the community. specificity of the urban form is explored with the aim of The idea that the transformation and the protection of the elaborating a design process to reinforce the public space as a urban landscape can occur according to a unitary process is reference point for the community. Fundamental for the the basis of the teaching experience described below. The succeeding in the design process is the analyzing of the direct assumption is in line with the main contribution of the most relation between a architectonic scale and a urban one. Isola advanced teachers in Italy on this subject at the University Vicentina was one of the subjects the students on the course Institute of Architecture in Venice during the second half of of Architectural and Urban Composition 2 at the Department the twentieth century, the so-called School of Venice [2]. of Civil, Environmental and Architectural Engineering of the According to them, the relationship between a city and University of Padova specifically investigated as an architecture, referring to the city’s scale in the study of opportunity to redesign the unity of the historic centre of this architecture, is the fundamental fact that is at the origin of an town that had previously been lost. effective theory on the project, which defines a synthesis between analysis and design, architecture and urban Keywords Identity of the Community, Memory, planning. History as a Tool for the Project, Public Space, City Centre Giuseppe Samonà, founder of the school, turned his attention to the "history of the architectural object, analysed and reconstructed using both ex cathedra lectures and exercises” [3], expressing an interest in the pragmatism of 1. Introduction history in terms of doing things. Egle Renata Trincanato accompanied students on site in Isola Vicentina is a small town with a population of ten Venice to investigate the buildings, explaining the reasons thousand to the north of Vicenza – the city of Palladio – on for “they had patently to be in that place and at time”, and provincial road 46 that leads to Schio and Thiene [1]. The studying with students the building themselves to determine centre of the built-up area, where the local community has a the means for future designs [4]. lively social and economic life, presents marked incoherence Saverio Muratori’s teaching was rooted in the history too. mainly due to disproportionate architecture built at different He wrote that students must first learn that “the study of a times in the last century and the heavy vehicular traffic that building begins with understanding its environment” [5]. runs along the provincial road. The urban fabric of Isola Aldo Rossi, Muratori’s assistant in Venice, insisted on the Vicentina has unresolved problems in its form in the area absolute correspondence between the analysis of building between the town hall and the church. and urban analysis, emphasizing the importance of finding Fortunately, enough traces of the previous physical reality precise relationship between architectural and urban remain and allow to recognize and read the morphology that structures [6]. His fundamental 1960s studies about underpinned the urban evolution. With our students on the typological analysis were published in 1966 in the book course of Architectural and Urban Composition 2 at the L’architettura della città [7], in which the spatial aspects and University of Padua (regular professor Enrico Pietrogrande, formal image of the transformations in the city are studied as Civil Engineering and Architecture 2(1): 42-51, 2014 43 a premise on which to base the design of the new church of St. Peter still stands but has been reconstructed architecture. [11] and along with the nearby independent church tower At the Institute of Architecture in Venice, with the passing now presents a decidedly disproportionate volume of the years and teachers, the analytical study of architecture compared to the delicate lesser architecture that composes consolidates interest in the city, starting with the the fabric of the town (Figures 4 and 5). examination of its urban fabric [8,9]. The same reference to pre-existing environmental and historical artefacts is believed as a founding value of teaching by the authors of this article, especially in the present day, marked by key issues of sustainability, and underpins the teaching experience described in the following pages. In the opinion of the authors the theme of the architectural modification of the historic city has not been enriched since the 1960s by other crucial contributions such as the ones from the Venice School. In the teaching experience presented in this article the first phase of the project the students had to elaborate was composed of analyzing land registry survey maps and written, pictorial, photographic records, in order to acquire informations about the past of the city centre and study the relationship between architecture and urban order. 2. Context Once called Isola di Malo [10], the town lies on one bank Figure 2. Isola Vicentina, land registry survey map of the Austrian land of the River Giara over the other side of the river from the register, 1812-30. The village developed to the north of the River Giara, convent of Santa Maria del Cengio that overlooks the town. centred on the triangular piazza and near the two small churches at the The buildings are historically organised in two fundamental north-eastern boundary. The convent of Santa Maria del Cengio stands in nuclei, the triangular piazza of the town hall where the an elevated position on the southern bank of the river. administrative centre of the community developed, and the religious pole composed of the churches of St. Peter and St. Jermaine with the cemetery between them (Figures 1 and 2). Figure 1. View of the piazza of Isola Vicentina, now called Piazza Marconi, with the town hall (to the right of the image) still in situ and the adjacent houses that were demolished after the Second World War and substituted with new incoherent buildings. The new church from the start of the last century already rises behind the buildings considered. These two places remain the most representative of the Figure 3. Isola Vicentina, land registry survey map, 1969. The size of the community, brushed by the historic connecting artery new church built between 1898 and 1914 is out of scale with the delicate running along the valley on the left bank of the River Giara architecture of the village. In addition, it is possible to see in the map the (Figure 3). The town hall is hosted in Palazzo Panizza, the large volume hosting the cinema-theatre and other buildings of less importance in the parish. symbol of secular power, and is still at the side of the triangular piazza dedicated to Guglielmo Marconi in 1939, The river is dry for nearly all of the year but if it rains while in the place manifesting religious power the parish heavily, it can suddenly become dangerous [12]. 44 Plans for the Historic Centre of Isola Vicentina, Italy Issues with Urban Morphology accompanied by the demolition of the historic church of St. Jermaine in 1925. The façade of the new St. Peters was designed by the architect Gerardo Marchioro who wanted it to be very decorative in order to remedy the lack of visual perspective. The imposing church tower by the side of the church was planned in 1827 and built between 1828 and 1837 where the town cemetery used to be found before it was moved following the issuing of the Napoleonic laws. The townspeople already identified with the municipal piazza through the previous centuries as testified to by a writer at the end of the 19th century according to whom Isola Vicentina “Has a triangular piazza surrounded by blocks of houses in the middle of which stood an elegant fountain spouting perennial water” [13]. The town hall was at the start of the 19th century an isolated building in the middle of this piazza, but the administration later moved to its current premises, the old house of the Panizza family, Figure 4. The new parish church of Saint Peter completed in 1914 with when the first building was demolished. The historic the small oratory of Saint Jermaine that was demolished a few years later, fountain in the middle of the piazza was recently restored in in 1925. the same place. 2.2. Morphological and Typological Elements With regard to the general characteristics of the buildings in the town, which arose out of the work culture and construction skills in the place, the houses are above all arranged in rows of terraces along the roads that structure the town, being articulated in the form of courtyards and rights of way for thoroughfares.