The G124 project – Renzo Piano’s working group on the suburbs – has chosen some areas of the city of Bari as its next field of experimentation. Piano will finance four scholarships for young architects graduating from the Politecnico di Bari with his life senator’s salary. In addition, the architect will offer a project for the recovery of the area behind via Altamura, where the ten murals on the facades of the buildings for the “San Paolo museum district” were recently created.

“We are honoured that the work of mending the suburbs launched by Renzo Piano has chosen Bari as a place for experimentation,” says Mayor Antonio Decaro, “and we are enthusiastic about continuing the collaboration with the Polytechnic, already consolidated during the Architecture Festival. The redevelopment of this underused space is a further step in the broader project of social and material regeneration under way in the San Paolo district, which last October saw the creation of the murals on the facades of the Arca Puglia buildings, and which will continue with the redevelopment of these areas through a green endowment of these public spaces, places par excellence dedicated to the consolidation of social relations”.

The initiative is being carried out in cooperation with the municipality and Bari Polytechnic, in particular with lecturers Carlo Moccia and Francesco Defilippis. In a participatory process, the project will involve close cooperation with the area’s residents in defining a shared transformation of the square. The Apulian capital is not the only city chosen in Italy for G124: in 2022, the rione Sanità in Naples and a square in the Commenda Est district of Rovigo, dedicated to the South African refugee Jerry Masslo, will also be involved.

Opening image: Quartiere San Paolo, Bari, Italy