Infrastructura Naturans. Architetture di trasformazione della circonvallazione di Palermo

Abstract

The article discusses the theoretical system that supports design themes and processes of recycling large urban road infrastructures, referring to an international research that frames them among the sustainable regeneration processes of the contemporary city, and further evoking the project for the transformation of Palermo's ring road that has been elaborated within this research. Witnesses of past urban seasons, these infrastructures are marked by a peculiar morphology that deserves to be maintained, while they must emancipate themselves from asphalt and adapt to new urban mobilities. By hybridizing vegetation and buildings as never before, the longest roadways in our urban contexts may transform their borders into new urban woods or linear forests, counteracting heat islands and supporting new interspecies habitats. The new urban highways of the future will not be antagonistic to architecture, or the city, as they have been for centuries. They will be the sites of a renewed, augmented nature, a fully functional expression of a new nonbinary urban genre, fabricated to make our cities livable as never before. Ecological corridors, vegetation, other species, climate, and renewable energy sources, will shape a new infrastructure: an infrastructura naturans.