The core of Ferrara is celebrated as one of
the most attractive and well-preserved
historical centre in Italy. Visiting it, you
will be surprised by the compact image of
the old city. Brick walls, saddle roofs,
narrow streets… tourists appreciate the
picturesque landscape and remember the
good old times… but citizens prefer to
abandon it and go to the country.
We wanted to invert the actual tendency
for depopulation of the old city redesigning
the spaces near the city wall focused
on this forget area.
The requalification project of the docks
area, promoted by municipality, has been
thought with turistic and leisure aims and
fits in with a more complex and articulated
plan about the Ferrara waterway concerning
the arrangement of the entire stretch
of urban canal.

The operation is oriented to the revitalization
of this important area by means of
the integration of the existing structures
with new ones in condition to develop the
tourist and river and free time activities.
The general project concerns hydraulic
operations of resection of river bed for a
better usability of the river docks; started
from this every student elborated different
solution to provide the area with leisure
services for young people and students.
Starting from these considerations in their
projects the students developped suggestion
to improve the area with unconventional
architectures for an unconventional
way of life, had to deal with the complexity
of concepts such as context, memory
and tradition. Handling with different materials,
surfaces and textures, studying
light and colours they used every possibility
to outline a new presence in the historic city.