City suburbs are often perceived as marginal spaces, distant from nerve centers and with fewer opportunities for development. However, thanks to the G124 project conceived by Renzo Piano, this view is changing. The project, born during his term as life senator, aims to transform Italian suburbs into more livable, inclusive and stimulating places, offering new opportunities to the communities that inhabit them.

The G124 project: a vision for the future of cities

The name G124 recalls the Senate room that Italy’s first architect occupied in the capital and symbolizes the place where the renewal of Italy’s suburban cities was pondered. A place that has become the focus of a choral work dedicated to urban regeneration. With the help of a group of young architects and multidisciplinary experts, Piano has promoted interventions in several Italian cities, intervening in often forgotten peripheral areas. The G124 project is distinguished by its approach that puts people at the center: each intervention aims not only to upgrade the material aspect of spaces, but seeks to unleash social relationships, revive the feeling of ” being a community,” and convert abandoned sites into elements of life and culture.

Among the many interventions curated by the G124 project, transformations that have breathed new life into complex urban contexts rich in potential stand out. For example, in the Librino district of Catania, public spaces were given new life with the creation of pedestrian paths well integrated into the urban fabric and the inclusion of green areas designed to encourage social gathering. In Venice, on the other hand, the Marghera district was the scene of an ambitious intervention that converted former industrial areas into multipurpose spaces, including urban parks and cultural centers, offering new opportunities to the city. These projects, such as the Don Bosco Court in the San Paolo neighborhood of Bari, embody G124’s vision: to transform suburbs into places of innovation and vitality, always respecting the unique characteristics of each context. Each project brought with it a breath of change, enhancing the peculiarities of the local context.

Don Bosco Court: a new beating heart for the St. Paul neighborhood

Once neglected and little lived in, Don Bosco Court was in a state of disrepair that limited its potential. Thanks to the G124 project, it has been completely transformed into a meeting and gathering place for the neighborhood, helping to improve the quality of life for residents and strengthen the sense of community.

The intervention included the planting of more than one hundred trees, including laurels and holm oaks, arranged to create a natural green cover over time. These are placed within stone quadratures, which not only define the spaces but also act as containment for the draining pavement, ensuring greater integration between nature and architecture.

The courtyard is conceived as a large urban garden, in which vegetation will grow to form a unified green roof. A clearing opens in the center, characterized by a tilling of the soil that generates a circular podium, conceived as the fulcrum of the space. Around it is a continuous stone seating, composed of ashlars of the same thickness as the paving, interrupted in some places to promote accessibility and flexibility of use.

The bush-hammered basalt paving is arranged radially to the heart of the courtyard, accompanying the natural unevenness of the terrain and creating a harmonious dialogue between the different elevations of the space.

Stone, the star element of the project, along with vegetation, was used to give solidity and character to the intervention, linking the new Don Bosco Court to the building tradition of the area. This intervention not only improved the appearance of the place, but also had a profound social impact, helping to change the perception of the St. Paul neighborhood from a neighborhood with social criticalities to an area of potential and human development.

Planning and community participation

The project idea stems from a scientific advisory agreement between the Municipality and the ArCoD department of the Bari Polytechnic. The scientific direction is given to Carlo Moccia and Francesco Defilippis, who coordinate the work of Tiziano De Venuto, Ezio Melchiorre, Rosa Piepoli and Giuseppe Tupputi, young architects selected through postgraduate scholarships funded by Renzo Piano’s G124 group.

The project actively involved the local community. Meetings with residents, organized by the grantees together with the president and councilors of City Hall III, allowed the integration of residents’ ideas and suggestions into the definition of the interventions, following Renzo Piano’s philosophy of creating “mending works” capable of responding to people’s needs and sewing the suburbs to the surrounding urban fabric.

Our contribution: a touch of stone for a shared dream

In this project, our company had the honor of collaborating with the G124 team from Bari, contributing to the construction of the Don Bosco Court through the supply and processing of the stone elements within the clearing. In the center of the courtyard, the circular green space is enclosed by the modular bench made of natural stone, elevated above the tree-lined level, and reached by several steps according to the height difference.

We worked with our usual craftsmanship as well as with the help of CNC technology for the more complex elements, such as the shaped seats that encircle the heart of the courtyard. The material used respects the historical roots of the Apulian territory being a local white stone already widely used in squares, historic centers and important streets of the Bari area.

A project that combines beauty and community

Participating in Renzo Piano’s G124 project for Don Bosco Court was more than just a professional collaboration for us. We shared a vision: that of creating places that can improve people’s quality of life. Each block we worked on represents our commitment to contribute to a future in which suburbs are no longer synonymous with marginality, but become places of centrality and social innovation.

We believe that beauty should be accessible to all and that any urban regeneration intervention can generate a lasting positive impact. The Don Bosco Court is concrete proof of this: a place that, thanks to the collaboration between professionals in the field, institutions and the community, has come back to life, offering new possibilities for encounters and growth.

Looking to the future

The experience with the G124 project motivates us to continue on the path of enhancing the area through stone, a material that for us represents not only a constructive resource, but a symbol of history and identity.

We are deeply grateful to the G124 team and Renzo Piano for giving us the opportunity to contribute to such a significant project. Participating in the rebirth of Corte Don Bosco has allowed us to bring our passion for stonework into play, sharing the vision of transforming a space into a living and welcoming place, capable of bringing people together and telling a new story of beauty and rebirth.

If you would like to learn more about our work and the materials we use, please feel free to contact us or visit our Instagram page to discover our latest achievements!