Silvia D’ANDREA | Gianluca BELLI
(Dipartimento di Architettura dell’Università degli Studi di Firenze, Italy)
Abstract:
The object of this poster is the study of an area in Florence, the Mattonaia Quarter, with the intent to analyze its transformation after the proclamation of Florence as Capital of Italy in 1865. In the end, the analysis will reconstruct the quarter through a graphic representation and the construction of a 3-D model. The result will be a “photograph” of the area in two separate moments: 1855, just before the master plan designed by Giuseppe Poggi started expanding the city, and the years following 1870, as the work progressed.
Piazza Beccaria, once known as Piazza alla Croce, is particularly studied because it is the focal point of the transformations made by Poggi. This reconstruction is based on the analysis of several fonts, among them being historical maps, documents and drawings by Poggi, photographs and landscape paintings by artists from that period.
They enabled the distinction of the documented parts from those which are fruit of a procedure of deduction and hypothesis because of lack of detailed information.
We can see the transformation of this area, from an expanse of vegetable gardens, fields and gardens, surrounded by the bordering streets and to the North by the ancient walls, almost like a rural area, in an extension of the city center, with a dense mesh of new roads which creates a series of residencial blocks.
Finally, two plastic figures were constructed by means of a 3-D printer to the scale of 1:1,000 which reproduced the two situations of the Mattonaia Quarter, maintaining the differences described by using a different level of definition in the 3-D model.
The two plastic figures are now shown at the Archivio di Stato exhibit Una Capitale e il suo architetto, in Florence, with the intent to make people see clearly and concretely how the city changed.
Keywords: Firenze, Mattonaia, Giuseppe Poggi, 3D printing