Alice Martemucci

Thesis in Architectural Design

Thesis in Architectural Design

Thesis by Alice Martemucci

Contact Email: alice.martemucci@gmail.com
EU Architecture Degree - Faculty of Architecture “Valle Giulia” La Sapienza AA 2012-2013
Speaker: Prof. Arch. Alfonso Giancotti

Redevelopment of the ILVA industrial area of Taranto into a multifunctional park

The Rio Conference, held in 1992, declared the emergence of environmental issues as a major theme of national and international policies. The need for global governance for the environmental issues planetary (greenhouse effect, acidification, ozone layer reduction, biodiversity protection). It was also required to integrate the objectives of resource protection and environmental quality both in national and local territorial and economic policies, and in the production strategies of economic groups. Ten years later, with the Johannesburg Conference of 2002, the environmental effects of a decade of globalization were quantified and three results were analyzed relating to the effectiveness of global and national, public and private policies; the balance of the state of environmental resources and risks; the balance of the direct and indirect effects of the globalization of markets.

Over the last decade, structural changes in the economy, the spread of new technologies and the development of environmental policies have allowed the consolidation of the process of 'dematerialization' and reduction of the environmental intensity of economic development that began in the mid-70s. All the main environmental indicators have become decoupled from economic indicators. On a global scale, energy consumption has increased by 10,5%, CO2 emissions (from energy use alone) have grown by 8%, emissions of sulphur dioxide and nitrogen oxides have decreased, iron consumption has increased by 3% (while it had grown by 11% in the previous decade).

In developed countries, especially in Europe, an absolute reduction in environmental loads of 4% has been achieved in many respects. Air emissions, from sulphur dioxide to nitrogen oxides to heavy metals and dioxins, have thus been uniformly and consistently reduced. Water withdrawals in most European countries have decreased or stabilized and the polluting load released into water bodies, groundwater and the sea has decreased.

Over the course of this decade, in most regions of developed countries the quality of the environmental problem or conflict has changed, thanks to the regulation of water and air discharges and waste disposal itself. Some areas and limited points are an exception, such as the city of Taranto with ILVA, the largest steel center in Europe, the AGIP refinery, and the Cementir cement factory.

For this reason, Taranto is one of the most polluted European cities. The Ilva steelworks in Taranto releases into the atmosphere a quantity of dioxin equal to 8,8% of the European total, but there is no system for monitoring pollutants in the city. In fact, the data relating to deaths from neoplasms in Taranto have more than doubled from 1971 to 1996. The results of the Prevention Department of the local ASL, for the four-year period 1998-2001 in the Ionian province, record approximately 1.200 deaths per year, data which, for lung neoplasms, place Taranto among the areas of Southern Italy with the highest incidence above the national average.

98% of the benzo(a)pyrene produced in the industrial area comes from the Ilva coke ovens. It is, in fact, impossible to think of a compatibility between the coke ovens and a city that lives close to the industry. In Taranto many associations and committees have long supported the closure of the hot area.

What could be the solution? The goal is to transform the approximately 4.000.000 square meters of the hot area into a new part of the city that sees its extraordinary environmental resources enhanced.

In this area, which overlooks the Mar Piccolo, it will finally be possible to give space and impetus to that tourist resource of the Taras Magna Graecia and the Tarentum Latina, given that many archaeological sites overlook that body of water that could benefit from various facilities: free time, culture, nautical. The core of the project is the creation of a large renewable energy park that will be characterized by industrial archaeology buildings recovered for new uses, spaces equipped for sports and free time, commercial and tertiary activities.

Goals:

1_ The measurement of space:

The aim of the intervention is to re-establish a structure to the space between things, which allows for a different interpretation, to preserve the memory of the factory and build a new environment for different activities.

2_ The park's relationship with the city:

The factory excludes the city from its perimeter. Its laws are different from those of an urban environment, made of relationships, mediations, slow transformations. The factory subjects the land to its needs, bends the environment to its dimensions. The work to be done to return the park to the city therefore consists in mending the tear that the factory caused.

3_Creation of a complex of parks of various types:

-recreational parks;
-cultural parks;
-nature reserves;

4_ New proposals for cultural activities The recovery of industrial complexes can lead to the use of premises suitable for hosting cultural and social activities.