Septmber 23, 2008
Diego and Andrea Della Valle have presented the project for the construction of a multipurpose area that will become a veritable “football city”. The project’s catalysing element is the new stadium for the Fiorentina Football Club, designed by Massimiliano Fuksas and destined to replace the glorious “Artemio Franchi” stadium, designed by Pier Luigi Nervi and restored  by Italo Gamberini and Loris G. Macci for the 1990 World Cup. The stadium will be characterised by transparent roofing, which will envelop it like a cloud.
There are other novelties, too, though. The new installation will indeed host a theme park on football where, thanks to the latest-generation technologies, football lovers will find themselves in a sort of “wonderland”.
There will also be a “downtown”, where the city’s tradesmen will be able to “replicate” their activities, a museum of modern art, hotels, shopping centre, and sports facilities. And all this immersed in greenery and traversed by waterways, in the wake of what has always been the goal of the Della Valle family: to bring families back to stadiums, eliminating the fringe of violent supporters.
The entirely private project is promoted by the “Fondazione Viola”, which from the management of the complex will draw the profits to take the Fiorentina to the top level, thus inaugurating a new management model for sports clubs. The site of the installation will be at Castello, to the north of Florence: the entire park will have an extension of some 80 hectares, and the stadium will have a capacity of some 40-50,000 spectators.
A great opportunity for Florence of the future, promoted by a company that as already displayed a marked sensitivity towards quality architecture, entrusting the design of the Tod’s headquarters of Tokyo to Toyo Ito.