Tag: industrial heritage

This article frames the expansion of the University of Pisa’s Fibonacci Campus as a threshold project: an interface between university and city operating within a historically stratified urban edge, where the former Marzotto industrial complex meets Pisa’s medieval walls. Building on contextual analysis of the site’s transformations – from twentieth-century rationalist factory to academic campus – this research discusses how new scientific programs can be inserted without compromising the legibility of the existing fabric. The design translates departmental needs for flexible laboratories and study environments into a spatial gradient that combines public accessibility and controlled research conditions. Ground-floor spaces are conceived as independently usable civic rooms, while open areas are reconfigured as shared green infrastructure that reconnects institutional and urban life. A comparative cost appraisal, developed from recent public tenders, frames feasibility from a public-client perspective and links adaptability of use to long-term economic sustainability. Rather than proposing a resolved model, the project advances a critical framework that makes legible the tensions between architectural intent, institutional governance, and civic appropriation inherent in any university expansion within a historic urban context.