Riqualificazione urbana e qualità dell'abitare. Il progetto Cremona City Hub. Urban renewal and quality of habitat: the Cremona City Hub project

The growth of environmental culture, changing economic dynamics and recent social and cultural changes have shifted the centre of gravity of architectural design from the “centrality of the function” to the “centrality of the location”, stimulating new lines of research on the question of the habitat, an essential component of urban organisation and a preferred field of application for typological, technical and constructional experimentation. The programme for the urban renewal of the former Annonaria area promoted by the Council of Cremona through a two phase international competition which concluded in May 2012, is based on the desire to give the area an inviting and habitable atmosphere that would set new standards and be capable of satisfying an increasingly demanding and diversified market. The winning design followed the logic of a healthy, compact and economically sustainable city with the intent of producing a unitary design that perpetuates the historical structure of a historical city. Defining the new demands and levels of performance for the residential typology, within a structured and multi-faceted functional programme, is carried out through the search for innovative and functional technological solutions for a new quality of habitat based on the prerequisites of environmental, socio-cultural and economic sustainability. The evolving dynamics of planning proposals are meant to enable elements of ecological quality such as diversity, interdependence, the context, and information to coexist, through the adoption of solidarity, an inviting appearance, culture, history, awareness and innovation as essential values. Architectural planning for a healthy, harmonious and integrated city means innovating through processes of technology transfer, triggering possible habitational scenarios which involve the use of contemporary techniques and resources. The concept of a healthy, wholesome city, the close connection between urban and architectural planning, a different level of inviting and habitable appeal, care of body and mind including through the perception of the merits of the locations, of the environments, of the landscape, and the staging of events of entertainment and culture, are questions to which new planning approaches are intended to guarantee suitable replies.