MACROLOTTO 0. hibrid hutong

Prato as flexible city. The research of the Architectural Design Laboratories of the third year of the University of Ferrara has focused, over the last two years, on the city of Prato. Prato is a case of what we call as “flexible city”, as social experimentation lab, architecture and urban plan-ning, which due to its size and its social context sees accelerated the processes that lead the “post-crisis” city . Prato is a city that relies, from the medieval age, his wealth on the commerce as well as the “regeneration” of the materials as a generator of wealth, economic and social. Famous for its manufacturing industry, which was originally established by the reuse of “rags” and that led to the birth - since the fourteenth century - the “carded fabric”, it still is part of one of the most important bought for the Italian economy and Europe: the textile manufacture. An industry that has led, over the last sixty years, the residence of a foreign community, mostly Chinese, who today is worth about a quarter of the entire population of the city. A community that is appropriate - at the beginning - some economic and urban interstitial spaces but that gradually increased its presence up to transform whole portions of the city in the eastern islands. Focus Prato become a city “scenario.” An urban and theatrical body at the same time. As Luca Ronconi has shown in the ‘70s with his “Laboratory Prato”. A laboratory where - thanks to temporary structures designed by Gae Aulenti - the city becomes a Stage. A laboratory that allowed some of the first conversions of indu-strial heritage. With part of the largest textile mill in the city, said “The Fabbricone” which became what is now, the avantgarde theater”Fabbricone” . Prato as “urban laboratory”, as Bernardo Secchi called it during the project for the new Master Plan. Plan that has led to the clear recognizability in the urban and functional area of the Macrolotto Zero. An area in which production, residence, infrastructure constitute a homogeneous set of Production City – as La Chaus du Fond for watches - a few hundred meters from the historical center. An area that now is recognizable as the Chinatown of Prato. Macrolotto, that, with the former area of the intramura hospital are at the core of Labs projects of the third year of the Faculty of Architecture of Ferrara. And if Macrolotto regeneration may, in addition to put the focus of the projects and its places, take the character of an Hybrid Hutong where the Mediterranean city - Flexible - hybridizes with the Chinese city thanks the public space such as points of cultural union on which the architecture can work (in a sort of overlap between the two historical models that work like common point), the former hospital area sees an innovative path for architectural research that comes from desire to “design the demolition” as the area of , the former hospital is already planned its demolition to make way for a park of three hectares within the historic walls. So avoid the black hole of the scrap yard, but rather a progressive path - part of a larger operation which is connected to the recycling of macrolotto and beyond - who see disassembly / spolio and re-use of the material is the former hospital , a time of possible - con-temporary - use, so as to accompany the disposal towards the regeneration in a path as much as possible in continuity and without the holes blacks resulting from barriers of traditional shipyards. Prato as a challenge to the conventions. Relying on the fact that its structure has, always, he showed an absorption capacity of the architectural and social dynamics that generally see their presence in other well-sized cities. Prato as flexible cities and urban prototype of the twenty-first century, and laboratory of the globalized province. Design Strategies. Landmarks Parasites Urban Places Memory Grid Set Design The exhibition wants the presence of A1 panels with project proposals (35 projects), two video installation and a Site Specific