PESCARA
The university residence of Pescara “G.Benedetto Croce”, located not far from the University Center, has for some time been playing an important role as a structure at the service of non-resident students, and has already started a process of increasing hospitality in favor of foreign students since 2017. coming from public universities networked with the University of Chieti and Pescara through various international cooperation programs.
The residential complex, consisting of a building for receptive use, and a complex for canteen use, undergoing renovation, has a considerable amount of open spaces, in a state of under-use and partial decay.
During the period of the pandemic, precisely these spaces in front of the canteen and the Pescara residence were of strategic importance for the socialization and exchange of shared projects, hosting impromptu activities, organized by student associations or single university teachers, such as small exhibitions at the ‘open, cinematic events, and convivial activities for the benefit of the students housed in the residence and the other university students who continued to enjoy them together with the meals provided in different ways.
A first, partial temporary arrangement of some of the aforementioned areas, in the period April / December 2020, was experimented by the architecture students who were guests of the residence (outdoor cinema, common temporary furnishings, educational installations) as a result of the Workshop “This House is a Common Good ”promoted by prof. ing. Piero Rovigatti, of the UdA Department of Architecture, in collaboration with the professors and international guest students (Universidad de La Salle, Bogotà), as part of the University’s international relations.
This first experience has highlighted the importance of the use of external and open spaces, internal and contiguous to the Adsu CH / PE structures, for carrying out activities at the service of students, also of a cultural, sporting and recreational nature, also in relation to the scarcity of supply of these services in the urban area of interest.
From these experiences and general considerations arises the idea of competing for the definition of intervention procedures and solutions aimed at filling these gaps, taking as a theme for reflection the reorganization and re-functionalization of the open spaces inside the structures of the Student House beyond their current functional definition, taking the consideration of these spaces in relation to the general system of public spaces and urban
commons that organize the neighborhood as a theme for reflection and design proposal.
INSIDE / Outside, Beyond the courtyard, title assumed by the competition, thus becomes a motto and strategic indication of a design action that tries to consider the organization of these spaces no longer, only, as an internal service endowment to the community that inhabits the Student House, but as a space of relationship between this community and the larger community that lives and lives in the neighborhood to which it belongs. An opportunity to rethink the open space around and at the service of imported service equipment that the recent COVID emergency has made particularly relevant and timely, like any consideration that today looks at urban public spaces also in their potential role of healthy spaces, or to a lesser extent. health risk, on which to rethink the organization of the urban space and the urban scale of proximity, the neighborhoods. (P.R.)
INSIDE/OUTSIDE 