Restyling for the Artemio Franchi stadium in Florence, the home of the Fiorentina. The winning project, that of Studio Arup Italia, was presented in the Salone dei Cinquecento in Palazzo Vecchio and won over 31 participants in the competition. The new stadium will have to maintain the Marathon tower, the stands and the spiral staircases while new curves will be created in front of the existing ones, commercial spaces (Fiorentina could come into play here) and a hotel around the Franchi. The roadmap has certain and tight deadlines: construction sites must start in 2023 (probably in October) and close by 2026.
The winning project “for the new Franchi is essentially made up of the roof, to allow all fans to stay under the roof, and is one of the most visible, simple and elegant elements. The other is a system of new stands that go to enroll in the historical ones that are heritage to be protected, and bring the seats closer to the field than the current configuration with very distant curves. We will bring the fans close to the field and create new seats on the marathon sides and grandstand that will feature premium seats “. This was stated by Filippo Minora, senior architect of Arup Italia. The project by the Arup studio – chief designer Daniel Hirsch – won the Artemio Franchi restyling project in Florence.
Arup, as Minora recalled, participated “in the construction of the Beijing stadium in Munich. We worked with Renzo Piano for the Bari stadium”. “The thing we like most – he said – is to have created these new spaces between the existing stands and the new ones that become real cultural hubs of the city”. Minora underlined that “it is possible” to allow Fiorentina to play during the works, “perhaps with limited capacity”. On the timing “we made a project with a clear timetable of 30 months of construction. We are very happy and we can’t wait to get started”.
