Il piano di Luigi Piccinato per il nuovo Centro universitario di Catania

In 1959 Luigi Piccinato (1899-1983) received the project assignment for the plan of Catania’s new University Centre. It isn’t the first time that the architect-urbanist, from Venetian origins and Roman training, works in the city of Etna. In fact, in 1926, as very young graduate, he got the task of rebuilding the Pacini theater-arena, and in 1932 he participated in the competition for the city’s urban planning. But the circumstance of the New University Centre marks for Piccinato the start of a more than ten-year relationship with the City, which also includes the complicated drafting of the Municipal town planning (1961-69). Consistently with the local dynamics of urban growth and looking at the model of Anglo-Saxon campuses and self-sufficient Scandinavian neighborhoods, with the New University Centre Piccinato intends to define a territorial magnet of great importance. This article describes some fundamental stages of this project, examining the documents contained in the Luigi Piccinato’s Archive, which has recently been ordered and made completely usable in its great wealth.