Mercato di Novoli The northwest district of Florence, Novoli, has had missed opportunities and missteps in urban development, and is in need of revitalization. The primarily residential area is also the home of the Mercato Ortofrutticolo, a center for redistribution and wholesale of produce, meat, and fish in the Florence area. Mercato di Novoli reimagines the site as a new gastronomy center with a public market, restaurants, culinary school and library, auditorium, offices and a hotel to become a new commercial center. Recognizing that a European market thrives best under a free plan and pilotis, the ground floor is left open in a warehouse like space. This concept also ensures that all access to other program, involves direct interaction with the market level as other programs are raised to the heavier “piano nobile”. The formal process came from a series of operations beginning with creating an oval shaped piazza similar in scale with those in Renaissance city centers and placing it at the intersection of perceived paths from adjacent points of interest. Using the paths from surrounding points of interest as regulating lines, the form is subdivided, extruded, and manipulated in respect to orientation and program. Voids are subtracted from the original form to frame views to the landscape and allow for more light to the piazza center. The paths allow connections to proposed metro stations and development outlined by the city’s planning department. Concentration of the built forms allow for the rest of the site to be used for agriculture, recreation, and possible future development. Team: Austen Diliberto, Kaitlyn Wentz Fitzgerald
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