Late 20th Century (1975–2000)

Naples Centro Direzionale

1982– · Italy · Southern Europe · Megastructure, systems planning, and techno-utopian urbanism · Planned by Comune di Napoli; Kenzo Tange (masterplan)

Elevated view of the Centro Direzionale di Napoli high-rise business district, Naples · CC BY 3.0

Core idea

Modern business district east of center

Why it matters

Japanese-planned CBD in Italian context

Description

The Centro Direzionale of Naples is a modern high-rise business district planned for a derelict industrial area east of the historic centre, with a masterplan by Kenzo Tange adopted in 1982 for the city of Naples. Tange's scheme organised office towers, courts and public institutions along a raised pedestrian spine, with vehicle circulation and parking placed below deck, creating Italy's first true skyscraper cluster. Only part of the envisaged district was completed, and later phases remained unrealised.

Significance

The project is a rare transplantation of Japanese metabolist-inflected megastructure planning into a southern European city, and it gave Italy its most concentrated high-rise business quarter. Its uneven completion and the lifelessness of parts of its deck-level public realm have made it a frequently cited case in critiques of podium urbanism and of grand centri direzionali in Italian planning.

What shaped it

The Architecture of the City (1966)
Postmodernism in architecture & planning (1977)
The skyscraper (1885)

Sources

Open it on the interactive timeline →

hub.toekom.st — History of Urbanism · an interactive timeline of 850 planned cities across 6,000 years.