Blueprint is the title of the vision for the city given by Renzo Piano Building Workshop on the 23^rd of September 2015 as a free contribution to the future port, industrial, planning and social development of Genoa.

It is an overall design that leaves ample space for more detailed definition and, just like the copies of construction site plans, it is a vision of the development of the city, after which competitions are held for the construction of the different design areas.

This study, which examines the portion of the city from Porta Siberia to Punta Vagno, expresses a vision that, just like a blueprint, has the right immediacy to draw a harmonious relationship within port and city, building a bridge between citizens and operators’ demands, between those who ask for an environmentally sustainable development and those who hope for an increase in viable activities within the harbour and Fiera del Mare.

With The Blueprint, Genoa will again become a seaside city. Just as the recovery of the Porto Antico, redesigned by Renzo Piano, has allowed the historic centre to find a way to overlook the sea, The Blueprint, by opening a channel which connects the Porto Antico to the Fiera, will help to overcome the separation between the city and the sea caused during the development of the port after the Second World War.

Rather than fill in the sea to claim more space, the design plans an opposite process where valuable space and water are both reclaimed.

The Blueprint also represents an opportunity:

• to create what the architect calls “The Factory of The Port”, a large commercial and productive environment, ideally similar to the “Porto-Emporio” of the past, when the city had a close relationship with the sea. The new port has to create employment and encourage all those related activities that lead the city to wealth and productivity: from ship repairs, to nautical and yachting services and all commercial activities that have always been related to the sea.
• to make the city more attractive and liveable with a promenade from the waterfront to the Foce area.
• to support the shipbuilding industry, which represents a role of excellence for the city, by ensuring adequate spaces for both the dock and the land.
• to relaunch the nautical sector.
• to retrain the former fairground areas, by rethinking the use of spaces that today are underdeveloped and are poorly maintained but which are located in a central and strategic context for the city.

EXISTING STATE

BLUEPRINT