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Bologna unveils plan to reinforce 12th-century leaning tower

2023-12-08T18:30:00-05:00

Work to prevent the collapse of a leaning medieval tower in the heart of the northern Italian city of Bologna will cost €20m ($21.5m) and take 10 years at least, its mayor has said. Last weekend, the city unveiled a €4.3m (£3.7m) project to shore up the Garisenda tower – one of the city’s two towers that look out over central Bologna, providing inspiration over the centuries to painters and poets and a lookout spot during conflicts.

The Garisenda Tower, like the Tower of Pisa, has leaned for centuries as the ground on which it was built gave way soon after its construction. It slants at four degrees compared to 3.9 degrees the Tower of Pisa leans at. Last month, the area around the Garisenda Tower was cordoned off due to increasing concerns about its potential to collapse. Bologna’s mayor, Matteo Lepore, claims that the time to restore the structure will match the 10 years it took to reinforce the Tower of Pisa.

Built in the 12th century, the Garisenda Tower, which stands at approximately 157 feet, sits alongside the taller, and also leaning, Asinelli Tower. As reported by The Guardian, Italy’s civil protection agency has issued a “yellow” alert for the area around the two towers indicating the space is under watch. However, they aren’t believed to pose any immediate risks to people’s safety. The mayor has also urged the government to work to make the towers UNESCO World Heritage sites. Work to reinforce the to...

YACademy's 'Architecture for Fashion' 2022 Edition offers lectures and internships with MVRDV, Zaha Hadid Architects, and Toyo Ito & Associates

2022-06-14T17:00:00-04:00

This post is brought to you by YACademy

Architecture is a privileged tool of those brands characterized by an elevated positioning that, beyond the quality of their own products, needs to feed an imaginary of prestige, style, and refinement. From the showrooms to the stores, fashion needs architects as much as stylists, photographers and modelers.

For these reasons, the course Architecture for Fashion has been created, with the aim of training designers able to interpret the identity of a brand and transform it into an architectural space, moving the meanings of exclusivity, luxury, and elegance from the dress to the designated environment to exhibit it. By deepening the needs of the fashion world, students will gain skills that can spend in the field of luxury, becoming familiar with a segment of the market characterized by an eternal charm and continuous rewarding opportunities of application.

Throughout the course, participants will focus on technical and compositive topics at th...

Explore historic architecture and new interventions with YACademy's 2022 Architecture for Heritage training course

2022-05-09T13:04:00-04:00

This post is brought to you by YACademy

Architects have always been asked to breathe new life into ancient architectures inherited from the past or into historical – often monumental – artifacts that no longer respond to the customs and needs of contemporary society. Nevertheless, the ancient architectures tell our story, therefore, it deserves to be restored with interventions that bring along a hint of modernity and show the trace of the design activity. The “Architecture for Heritage” course has been created on these premises.

The course aims to train designers who will be able to understand and enhance the memory of historical architectures and take inspiration from them to carry out new interventions that both meet the new needs and are enriched by the link to the past. In a close dialogue between the ancient and the modern, between existing architectures and new interventions, it is possible to comprehend what has been and what is now, redesigning – through architecture – a h...