Elementi di Prato / Il senso dell'abitare

Prato, Italy, 2022 / 2023

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Prato is an intermediate medieval core city in central Italy that, since the mid-twentieth century, developed a world-class textile district based on a polycentric production structure and widespread family entrepreneurialism. During the global economic crisis of the early 2000s, production almost stalled, leaving the city without the core of a collective identity, but with a legacy of empty spaces. Significant foreign migration, in particular from China, filled these spaces, consolidating the clothing sector. The study investigated the city's contemporary identities resulting from the rapid change in people, activities, and spaces.

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Prato’s context is characterized by contrasts, which has managed to maintain, during the strong changes of recent decades, its character of living despite the inclusion of new communities. The soul of the city is found in its mixité, in the ‘mixture’, as Bernardo Secchi called it, of living and productive spaces; in its being devout, between places of worship and religious effigies on the houses; in its way of relating to the natural environment that surrounds it, between the scenic background of the Calvana and Monferrato mountains and the Bisenzio river.

 

The pictures are born from the research on the identity of the city, with its polycentrism and its multiculturalism, carried out in 2022 for the Municipality of Prato in the framework of the drafting of the new Structural Plan. The study investigated the characteristics of living, between public and private spaces, of the Prato urban fabric to document and enhance them to strengthen the structural invariants of the city.

 

Among the products of the research there are two photographic investigations, The sense of living and Elements of Prato (see video) and two publications.