OBR Paolo Brescia and Tommaso Principi and Michel Desvigne Paysagiste have been announced of the winners of first prize in the international competition to design the new Parco Centrale (Central Park) in Prato, Italy.The 230-team competition asked architects to design a new 3-hectare urban park in Prato’s historical city center on the site of the former city hospital, within the perimeter of the city walls. The project is intended to meet the needs of a contemporary city while driving socio-economic development of the city center through “enhancements to its touristic vocation, sustainability and accessibility.”The winning project pays a lot of attention to the urban fabric of the city of Prato and to its extreme regularity: an orthogonal grid which, as a trace of the ‘cardo’ and the ‘decumano’ of the Roman grid, is still very persistent and is striking for its spatial and temporal diffusion.
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