Situated just 200 meters from the Piazza Dei Miracoli, the Pisa main square, the ‘arena Garibaldi – stadio Romeo Anconetani’ stadium is designed by Italian studio Iotti + Pavarani and is a renovation project of the existing arena. The building is to provide multiple functions — from restaurants to exhibition spaces — and to set a new city center for locals and tourists.
Iotti + Pavarani’s architectural intention is to define a new landscape establishing strong synergies with its context rather than creating a self-contained object of design. The new cityscape is capable of generating an atmosphere which is relaxed and welcoming while in no way betraying those characteristics of elegance, lightness, and luminosity which exert such a powerful and persuasive effect on visitors to the nearby Piazza Dei Miracoli. It will thus not be a generic, introverted and self-referential construction but a stadium of Pisa, a new collective and multi-functional space, open to different levels of use — a new contemporary square for the city.
The whole stadium will incorporate a higher level pedestrian space in the form of a ring, a raised green square which will be used to manage the system of flows of people to and from the different sectors of the stadium and the related external security areas. This will lead to a radical improvement in the organization of external public spaces at street level while at the same time also offering another level for the use and enjoyment by both the locality and the city.
This lower part can then be used to house a variety of different activities (such as shops and service facilities, a cafe/restaurant, Pisa football club exhibition area and a public car-park) with the potential to transform the area into a vibrant and lively space. The sport complex itself has been conceived as a single innovative body which is able to guarantee the functional and safety standards required for a stadium hosting games from the highest division. It will have a capacity of 16,800 seats, all of which will be undercover and separated into 4 sectors.
The roof has been designed to be extremely light — it avoids seeking an impossible mimesis with the surrounding architectural finery but it is able to nonetheless establish a dialogue by virtue of its reduced height and a subtly metaphorical reference to the vibrant surfaces of Pisan romanesque through a highly luminous and intense treatment of the exterior. The external wall covering has been conceived as a series of different geometrical patterns in ETFE using shades of colours tending towards white in order to create a generally ethereal and luminous atmosphere, evoking a setting where both its future visitors and the local community are able to recognise this great collective experience as establishing a dialogue with the past while also looking towards the future.
