Urban city corridor

Areal View    Linear  City  Collage   Florence  Italy  1968

The Atelier Ziggurat Architects/Designers founded by G. Fiorenzoli in 1966, made
several theoretically based proposals for alternative future appropriations of the
Renaissance and Medieval historical downtown of Florence in Italy.
The proposed “Linear City“ project with its innovative and controversial urban
vision states for the first time the urge to physically connect the tourists driven and
commercially prosperous downtown to the otherwise neglected and yet densely
populated outer rings of the city.

In fact entire new neighbourhoods have been added to the perimeter of the city in a
sort of chaotic urban sprawl. This uncontrolled urban process seems to have distanced
dramatically most of citizens from participating to the opportunities and the cultural life
offered by its more traditional core. As a result Florence historical downtown has become
most of all an international showcase for all visitors without the active presence of its
local residents.

The ‘ Linear City ‘project in its utopian infrastructural length proposes a series of highly
visible residential waves . Their imposed presence is possible by the introduction of
events and services such as , subway stations, parking, museums, theatres, art galleries,
exhibition spaces, shopping centres , schools, plaza’s and markets , moderate scale
manufacturing .
The deployment of new electronic ‘media’ effecting the city skyline seem to suggest
new forms of social and physical aggregations. A sort of public and collective
performances to be determined.
This project has been documented by the media and exhibited at the Venice Biennale for
Architecture in 1980.

This project does not want to resolve the inherent problems derived from the dramatic
physical intrusion of an external urban system upon the medieval grid like architecture
of the city. The images and the proposed plans are the driven manifesto of an

architectural program that highlights a sort of discrimination between the current
social components of the city and the failure of its traditional , historical core to support
changes both social and political.
The project is confrontational and politically charged. The physical autonomy of all
activities in the “Linear City “are contained in a sort of urban corridor and do not
to seek any integration with any aspects of the surrounding outside world.
In this project it is at stake the idea that cities cannot be representative of only one
official culture , instead they should be able to be conceived as a live dynamic organism
that expresses in architecture the subtleties of social and cultural changes.
Tourism , in fact , cannot be the only recipient of the complexity of urban living.
Looking at the artificial landscaped project’s display of stepped roofs there is a hint to
the fact that the ‘step’ as an ancestral tectonic tool can be re invented at a large scale
giving a strong image to the idea of a democratic view of the world.

Location
Florence  Italy 
Competition
1968
Scope of Services
Chief Designer t
Construction Cost
N/A
Gross Floor Area
N/A