‘The wall is an element of division. It marks a boundary and defines a space. The wall is an element of break, an impassable limit or a community perimeter.' It is necessary to never forget these as its fundamental connotations.
Starting from the concept of the city walls, 'Wall-in' is a breaking element, it can bring fragments of wall within the city perimeter.
This is a new concept of wall, which is in harmonious antithesis with the most common one: on the one hand the old city walls close, enclose, separate. On the other hand the modern walls slip into the most representative centralities of the city, in the form of fragments.
The fragments are following some paths from the hinterland, to reach the different project areas where the surface of the street folds in a vertical open/closed wall.
'Wall-in' is a wall that separates, but at the same time you can pass trough it, switching from the apparent enclosure to the paradigm of the threshold. It is a wall that encloses, but it creates new and unusual spaces in its ‘external-inner’ public space.
‘Wall in’ is consisting in a simple modular structure, holed by passages. Their stylized frame is a symbolic representation of the holing present in the classical architectures of the city of Bologna: the old gates of the city, the porticos, the 'finestrella', the facades of the main monuments, but it also refers to the most significant contemporary buildings.
'Wall-in' is a long and thin wall, with two several features, depending on the side from which it is observed (a sort of Giano bifronte): from the external side it is blue, this tends to attract the observer's attention, which is captivated by this new element of apparent separation of the urban environment.
This tool comes from the baroque era in which, especially in Bologna, the piazza’s open space was used for temporary theatrical uses as ‘stage’, changing the spatial configuration.
From the inside it has an antiglare glass covering: this allows to a visual continuity, despite the presence of the wall. When it is placed in the center of a square, it reflects it and makes it look entire, when placed under a portico it doubles the space perception, or, in general, it doubles the view of a monument.
The wall is four meters high and it is made of septa with the following modules: two, three, four and six meters. Inside every septum one or more revolving windows-doors opens. This makes it versatile and suitable for being built in different areas. The wall has a trapezoidal section (at the base 50 cm; at the top 15 cm) and a very light structure, easy to transport and assemble on site.
All the used materials are not expensive and easy to find on the marketplace.
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The wall, in almost all cases, interferes with the main characteristic of the city of Bologna: the porticos.
The mirrored side always reflects the most important monument of the concerned area (the "finestrella", the gates of the city, the Basilica of San Petronio, the two towers, etc).
The blue side is always visible from the visitor-citizen access-entrance.
