Histories of Postwar Architecture, No. 9 (2021): Leonardo Ricci (1918-1994). Archives I

The paper traces the political and design events that led the city of Florence and FIAT to involve numerous architects in 1985 for the construction of a new district on the area owned by the car manufacturer. In addition to various office and commercial buildings, the city’s Palace of Justice would also be built here. Coordinated by Lawrence Halprin and Bruno Zevi, the architects - Leonardo Ricci, Ralph Erskine, Roberto Gabetti and Aimaro Isola, Luigi Pellegrin, Aldo Loris Rossi, Richard Rogers, Walter Di Salvo, Iginio Cappai and Pietro Mainardis, Gunnar Birkerts and Piero Paoli - drew up an urban plan for the area during three workshops (1987-1988). Leonardo Ricci (initially accompanied by Giovanni Michelucci) is responsible for the design of the Palace of Justice, which will be the only building constructed in the district. Using unpublished documentation, the paper focuses on the purely political reasons why the neighbourhood could not be realised, leaving Ricci’s building as a desolate fragment of an urban ideal.