Smart Harbor Competition | Simone Callea

The project entails converting and expanding the former warehouse to turn it into an arts center, an “arts warehouses”. The design of the arts center in the old warehouse is in tandem with the urban redevelopment of this derelict site on the Pesaro City’s edge. It is the impetus to create a new point of attraction complete with services for entertainment and free time, including a movie theatre, auditorium, music hub, café – restaurant, Harbor Plaza, green areas and a boardwalk along the wet dock that redesigns the port. Two symmetrical parallelepiped buildings are clad in screen-printed light blue glass panes and hold a internet-café, a library and spaces for small workshop with a sea view. They mark the building’s axial orientation and emphasize the entrance in the Smart Harbor area. Two “twin stones” constituted by an envelop formed by a triangular steel mesh and covered by glass panes emerge from grass covers and pathways covered by granite slabs. The complex of the Smart Harbor is morphologically connected to the ground from which it emerges while creating a multidirectional landscape in which the visitors arrive from different directions and level via inclined pedestrian routes as well as stairs, ramps and green narrow passageways. However during the design phase there was more focus on aspects such as the analogy with the natural landscape which can be represented using architecture: the free flow between territories and zones, the transition between external and internal levels, the study of topography and events such as water erosion of stones. These considerations have generated four large volumes with smooth corners which enhance the naturalistic metaphor project.