Rewriting Railway Infrastructure. An Architectural Approach to the Infrastructural Edge as Opportunity for Urban Regeneration

The edge. Interface between infrastructure and territory, physical border along which the railway encounters its closest context assuming a role in its spatial and architectural definition: the longitudinal dimension of the border determines the interaction between the infrastructure and the places in which it lays establishing a transversal relationship. The infrastructure edge undergoes continuous variation in relation to the specific conditions of its adjacent areas. Which role does the architectural approach assume in a possible reinterpretation of the edge? Understanding the infrastructure border, both as an artifact and space available to the project, can be the starting point to attribute to it an urban, connective and environmental role. Through the architectural project, this linear element seeks a transversal variable depth that transforms it into an ‘extended edge’, a place to inhabit, an opportunity for regeneration that gives a new quality to the infrastructure border, rewriting its relationship with consolidated fabrics.