Resumen de Il progetto incompiuto di Massimo Carmassi per il restauro dellaFortezza Nuova di Pisa
The Fortezza Nuova of Pisa is the most important fortification attached to the city’s medieval walls. Builtas a military garrison at the beginning of the 15th century, when Florence conquered the Republic of Pisafor the first time, architects such as Filippo Brunelleschi, Giuliano da Sangallo and Antonio da Sangallowere involved in its design and construction. First abandoned, then transformed into a private garden, itfinally turned back into a public space at the beginning of the twentieth century. At the end of the 1970s,the Fortress appeared as a place of decay in the city’s heart. Following a brief overview of the events thatdetermined its architectural morphology, the article focuses on the recovery plan of the Fortress, as it wasdesigned in 1981 by the Project Office of the Municipality of Pisa, directed by Massimo Carmassi. As partof the redevelopment project of the south-eastern vertex of the city walls, Carmassi’s project was carriedout only for the demolition part, and just the preliminary drawings from the archive can show today whatthe subsequent phases should have been. From a methodologically analytical reading of the project, firstat the urban scale and then at the architectural one, three main distinct moments emerge: the demolition ofthe additions, the reconstruction of the historical components, and the new construction characterized by acontemporary language. Starting from this analysis, it has been possible to carry out a critical interpretationof the unfinished recovery project of the Fortezza Nuova, investigating its theoretical intuitions and formalintentions. The study shows how Massimo Carmassi’s project has conceived the recovery of the Fortress,not as the restoration of an independent building, but as the main engine of a wider urban redevelopment,where contemporary architecture should have filled the urban voids in dialogue with the historic building.After highlighting the peculiar design characteristics and the intellectual reasons deduced from thedrawings, the project is thus framed within the restoration methodology of the Carmassian school, amethod that has been constituting the primary strategy for the recovery of the urban image of Pisa fromthe 1970s to the 1990s.
