PIAZZALE SANTA CROCE IN PARMA

Piazza Santa Croce, the “pilgrim” gateway to the city of Parma, because that was where Roman pilgrims from all over Europe entered in the Middle Ages, now appears little more than a traffic circle, absorbed in the flow of cars. The design theme of the ideas competition urges a rethinking of this place in relation to its inhabitants, to the passers-by, to the people who cross it and experience it every day. This place was rethought as a space to be contemplated, a scenario to be observed by those who stand on the square and by those who drive through its streets. A dynamic element was imagined, a sequence of steel rushes terminating in a luminous diffuser of fiber optics; these generate a chaotic sequence that metaphorically evokes the entry of a swarm of fireflies into the city from the very fields of wheat with which Parma is surrounded.