The Heroes Within | Florence, Italy | Unit 21 | 2023

On the grounds of Florence’s epicentre of sports of Campo di Marte, traditional, club organized sports have established a permanent mark as the most sought for sports, leaving little to no recognition to self-organized and individualised sports. 

The project aims to take over, or better, reshape the existing skatepark, continuing its legacy by offering larger, more versatile spaces for the practice of skateboarding itself, with the inclusion of sports climbing as an additional ‘urban’ defined sport. The new sports centre is a central hub for youth culture, which also seeks to establish greater recognition not only within the grounds of Campo di Marte itself, but also within Florence as a whole, following the recognition of both skateboarding and sports climbing as official Olympic sports in the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. Skate-path of the Tokyo 2020 Olympics skateboarding finalists and sports data informed the parametric-based design of the sports centre itself, so to encrypt and celebrate the ‘performative’ design language of the athlete users’ skating heroes.

The Heroes Within | Final Film

Project 1 | “Running Data, Data Running” | Final Film

Final Plans and Section