Architect Cristian Gori


Redevelopment of
Bellaria Igea Marina
Natural Shopping Centre

Year 2010-11

Designers:
Project unit coordinator
Architect Cristian Gori
Iscom group coordinator
Doctor Nicola Minelli
Gecc lab coordinator
Architect Giovanna Codato

Project awarded Downtown Achievement Awards at the 59th World Congress of the Downtown Association in the category Public Space (6-9 October 2013) in New York City, USA.

Project presented at the International Retail Business Development conference during the 57th International Downtown Association convention (22-26 September 2011) in Charlotte, North Carolina USA

Urban framework

Bellaria Igea Marina is a seaside resort town with about 20.000 residents, situated on the Adriatic sea in the north-east of Italy. It’s physically structured in parallel lines to the coastline and it’s crossed in the middle by the river Uso: in this point there’s the harbour-channel that divides Bellaria, in the north, from Igea Marina, in the south. Characterized by two different town centres that are particularly active during the summer, it tends to get dull during the winter because of a series of urban problems that make the two town centres not very accessible and, at the same time, unattractive: this gives troubles to the local businesses and vitality of the town.

 

Project

The study project enabled for the redevelopment of the town natural shopping center was inspired by the Idea Plan promoted in 2008 by some of the most important economic categories grouped under the acronym Emisfero (Confartigianato, Federalberghi, Coop. Bagnini, Confcommercio). The main strategic guidelines on a territorial level aim at transforming Bellaria Igea Marina into a “hinge” between the coastline and the inland, while on an urban level the promoted goals regard:

“the union” between Bellaria and Igea Marina working on the valorization of the river channel and on the re-joining of the individual urban areas that are currently disconnected. The urban project created in collaboration with Iscom Group and Gecc Lab aims at coordinating a series of interventions on the various project scales, working on the public space in an organic way. The main objectives for the redevelopment of this area that belongs to two commercial districts will concentrate on the identification of the appeal of the sites, of the nature of accessibility towards the centre and of the pleasantness of the urban spaces. The valorization of the Natural Shopping Centre is divided into three distinct areas (Bellaria centre, River channel, Igea Marina centre) in which different redevelopment projects have been designed and activated: these aim at achieving the planning objectives. Among the 2009 projects which have already been realised or are being fulfilled, we remember the bicycle and pedestrian bridge, the led illumination system, the information Totem system and the transformation of the railway station of Bellaria and Igea Marina into multipurpose exhibition spaces. Other significant projects will be the restyling of Bellaria main square and the construction of the new fish market. Both projects have been awarded provincial and regional founding. Among the most innovative projects as for technology, there are the ones promoted with Iscom and Gecc Lab; the first concerns the installation of cameras to detect the pedestrian flows, the second consists in the realization of the QR Code system to allow a virtual interaction through Smartphones or I-Pads with the most significant places of the town. The latter has the objective of creating a map of the territory in order to introduce the more significant elements from an architectural, scenic, orographical, historical, cultural and commercial point of view. In fact, the physical space of the town is projected into a “space-town” and this gives life to the “augmented space”: in other words, the users can build their own routes in new virtual geographies using the data of the town, and this helps them explore the products and places that the town has to offer. It’s an “open” urban project that wants to give the natural shopping centre the role of image and identity of the town on which we can structure the evolution process of the urban reality.

We consider this process on two different conceptual levels:

- the flexibility to adapt, in time, the physical spaces to the uses and needs of the urban culture,

- the ability to welcome multiple operations to the various project scales