INTEGRATED
ENGINEERING
AND ARCHITECTURE

The creation of the Justice Park in the former STA.VE.CO area serves a dual purpose: establishing a "Citadel of Justice" by unifying the Courts in a single location, and providing the city of Bologna with a substantial urban park and quality public space for socialising and community engagement. The project also offers a significant opportunity to link the historic city with the hill, transforming the previously isolated military citadel into a new urban hub. Embracing the challenge presented by the tender, the public space and the Park were thoroughly redesigned, incorporating urban reconnection strategies and architectural solutions that balance innovation with the preservation of existing buildings. From a functional and organisational standpoint, the project addresses two distinct user profiles: the urban park as a public space for the citizens of Bologna, and the Judicial City with its complex layout of separate flows. The park area extends from the Bolognese hills to the city’s edge, maintaining the forest's landscape identity while enriching it with opportunities, potential and surprises. Designed features include small, cozy rest areas, spaces for recreational activities, tree-lined paths, pergolas, and temporary pavilions, along with technological devices that facilitate multimedia interaction and storytelling on contemporary issues of justice and democracy. The architectural aspect of the project involves the restoration of existing buildings and the construction of four new structures following the demolition of non-restricted buildings. The new buildings integrate seamlessly into the compact fabric of the existing ones, featuring garden roofs and glass facades shielded by brise-soleil to filter the light. The reconfiguring and adaptive reuse of existing buildings are achieved through significant additions. The connective elements are transformed into glazed galleries, bioclimatic greenhouses, and vegetated spaces, adhering to biophilic principles to create comfortable and pleasant environments. Specifically, for the large, compact building housing the civil and criminal courts, the spatial organisation respects its morphology by incorporating galleries with glass roofs that filter light from above, distributing it to the enclosed courtroom spaces. These are perceptually rich areas that sometimes exploit the double-height spaces above the offices to create significant outlooks.