Cuneo (IT)

How can the site contribute to the productive city?

Cuneo, a city in south-western of Piedmont, situated at the foot of a range of Alpine valleys, overlooking the plains, it is reference to a broad geographical area. After a twenty-year population decline, since 2001 the trend reversal with substantial inflows from abroad, generates critical issues related to social inclusion of the new citizens, often living in the suburbs, but considered a resource.
The restoration and the re-functioning of part of former Montezemolo Barracks and its green surroundings will help to establish a new productive urban area related to cultural, leisure and sport. A new city hub where new services for the population and spaces for the promotion of local productive activities and for the experimentation of productive diversity, can find place.

City strategy

To complete the process of renewal that has affected until now the historical center of the city, the Administration of Cuneo started a regeneration program of the suburbs developing an enhancement project and an urban laboratory in which to experiment new models of living to be used throughout the city territory. The program will be started from 2017, with the interventions of urban regeneration along the central axis of the city and punctual interventions in the neighborhoods. Cuneo has defined in 2008 its Strategic Plan Cuneo 2020, together with: the promotion of river Parks Stura and Gesso, which are part of the plans on the landscape Cuneo 2015 - Meeting with polycentric Europe; development of logistics, mobility, valleys and in general an Urban Development Integrated Program.

Site definition 

Cuneo is located on a plateau, situated at the confluence of two rivers, Stura and Gesso, constraining urban sprawl along the southern direction, in a series of easily recognizable urban development phases. This conformation determines criticality for accessibility and urban mobility, especially with vehicles that are alternative to the private car. The area was chosen strategically in the new part of the city, for its central position in relation to the neighborhoods built in the seventies and as a point of connection between the central main axis, (which runs through the city of Cuneo, and connects it to France), and the crossing axis, in large part underground, linking the tree-lined ciliary axis and riverbanks, equipped as a park, which border it. The heterogeneous citizens live in an urban setting without the characteristics of urbanity, with large urban voids without clear functions and identities, with historic abandoned buildings like the former Montezemolo Barracks (fuel depots) or Villa Invernizzi, who must find a new cultural and social use.The project site consists of the disused portion of barracks within an uncultivated lot, which today represents a wide open area, outcome of the abandonment of buildings and public spaces, no longer used for military activities. An element of discontinuity in the urban fabric that threatens to become an insuperable rift. The regeneration action aims to make the site an attractive pole of cultural production for the city and the surrounding area, with activities and events, even temporary, in the large spaces and in the rehabilitated buildings. The implementation of the project area is planned from 2018, to complete the regeneration interventions of southern outskirts and in particular the area adjoining the former Piazza d’Armi (today Ferruccio Parri’s Park).

How is Production Considered in the Urban Diversity Program?

The town of Cuneo intends to implement for the site an integrated system of interventions and actions with the following objectives: define new urban functions; reduce urban decay situations, with new functions of buildings under-used; improve urban furniture and the existing building heritage; connect the river parks Stura and Gesso; reactivate efficient periphery-center, with new mobility services connections; offer additional services to the outlying areas, with the activation and development of new public services and the creation of new social and cultural facilities and services; reduce social disadvantage, with the creation of aggregative/ attractions structures; increase public services for urban security.

Entrance to the underground road from via Bodina

Former Piazza d'Armi with residential types

Entrance to Montezemolo barracks, via Giordanengo

Small building near the athletic camp adjacent to the site