Study for a new definition of the southern side of Prato della Valle in Padua, Italy

Abstract

[EN] The boundary wall of the Santa Maria della Misericordia convent continuously delimited the southern limit of the Prato della Valle space in the southern part of Padua’s historical centre. Its presence was one of the elements that more than two century ago inspired the enlightened proposal by Andrea Memmo, the Superintendent of the Republic of Venice, and Domenico Cerato, a design professor at the University of Padua. Subsequently the straight and continuous limit was replaced by the discontinuous architecture of the Foro Boario entrance, built in 1913 according to a design by Alessandro Peretti; this weakened the overall solution based on an elliptical shape and the communicative power of the nearby basilica of Santa Giustina. The examination here presented dwells on these limits, simulating the virtual introduction of architectures with a continuous front to the southern edge of the Prato della Valle. One example is the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art built in Kansas City between 1930 and 1933, based on a design by the brothers Thomas and William Wight, and expanded in 1999 by Steven Hall. The study generally confirmed that the compactness of the building’s front newly provides strength to the late 18th century Memmo’s creative intuition, which gave a sense of unity to the general emptiness thanks to the certainty of its borders, and gives again the Basilica of Santa Giustina its monumental size. This paper investigates the composition of heterogeneous fragments, excerpts from the inventory of collective memory, and the resulting unpredictable architecture in an urban context.