Living the border | Marco Merigo

The concept of limit in the last decades has been transcended by the concept of link and connection, both at the scale urban and architecture. Piacenza, a roman foundation city, despite many others, has always “clashed” against Po‘ river, and never crossed it. Detecting this fact does not mean to deny the fundamental role that the river has played for the development of the city, but only emphasizes that the two different identities have been distinctively separated and coexisted. The underlying concept was to strengthen this separation by building a physical boundary that divides the city interior from its exterior. A need for a new meaning to understand the city by digging into its historical identity. The urbanisation therefore never reaches the river but connects to the viaduct of the existing highway as a new wall. The design aims to seek a partnership between the city and the river through the sinous path of the highway connecting some important destinations of Piacenza, the east to the west, the urbanised to the natural.