We have a winner

The international jury, that convened on Friday September 30 and Saturday Oct 1, 2016, unanimously announced the winner in the competition:

Paolo Brescia (OBR – Paolo Brescia e Tommaso Principi) – group leader
Michel Desvigne (Michel Desvigne Paysagiste)
Alberto Romeo (Intertecno)
with Tommaso Principi (OBR – Paolo Brescia e Tommaso Principi), Elisa Siffredi (OBR – Paolo Brescia e Tommaso Principi), Enrico Ferraris (Michel Desvigne Paysagiste), Massimiliano Marzo (Intertecno)

A public presentation of the winning project was held on Friday October 7 at 4 pm at Sala del Consiglio Comunale di Prato. All 10 finalists were invited to participate in the round table discussion, moderated by Marco Brizzi, with Valerio Barberis, Deputy Mayor for Urban Planning at the Municipality of Prato, Pippo Ciorra, senior curator for architecture at the MAXXI museum in Rome, and Elisa Cristiana Cattaneo, scholar in Landscape Urbanism and professor at the Politecnico di Milano.

See the 10 finalist projects.

Jury’s Interviews

Bernard Tschumi
Michelle Provoost-website
Sébastien Marot
Roberto Zancan
Francesco Procopio

The jury’s motivations

Bernard Tschumi: “The project is remarkable in the way it understands and celebrates the history of Prato and of its medieval walls. At the same time, it looks to the future and to the development of the city and its diverse population.”

Michelle Provoost: “It’s a strong and poetic design that provides the community with a green space and a strategy to develop the area as a place that will cater to the citizens while at the same time attracting visitors from outside.”

Sébastien Marot: “We selected this project because it’s looking at the site in depth rather than in extension. It develops a strategy of “strata”, as opposed to adding elements in plan. And in so doing, it enhances the presence of the stunning elements that already exist on the site, like the medieval wall, the trees, the grid.”

Roberto Zancan: “A clear, modern, traditional design that assures the chance to spread the arts in the landscape and the landscape in the city.”

The winning project

Paolo Brescia (OBR Paolo Brescia e Tommaso Principi) – group leader
Michel Desvigne (Michel Desvigne Paysagiste)
Alberto Romeo (Intertecno)
with Tommaso Principi (OBR Paolo Brescia e Tommaso Principi), Elisa Siffredi (OBR Paolo Brescia e Tommaso Principi), Enrico Ferraris (Michel Desvigne Paysagiste), Massimiliano Marzo (Intertecno)

The park presents an elaborate vegetal and mineral composition that we conceived by interpreting three-dimensionally a specific cartography. The aerial views of Prato, that show a succession of vegetation and factories, have been decrypted, superimposed, developed. We abstracted the rhythms and the geometric motifs that reorganize the substance of the city. And these elements become the matrix upon which we imagine the new possible landscape for the park […].”
Excerpts from the technical report, downloadable here  

 

See the 10 finalist projects.