Redevelopment Project of the Cervia Natural Park

Landscape architecture: Enrica Dall'Ara
Coll.: Sara Angelini, Gabriele Meluzzi,
Marta Rincón Rivaséz
Environmental Graphics: David Gil
Client: Parco Naturale di Cervia
Project date: 2012-2013
Construction date: 2014

The Natural Park inside the Pinewood of Cervia (Ravenna, Italy) is an area with an high conservation value, being now part of the protected areas of The Regional Park of the Po Delta in the Emilia Romagna region. It is a public park characterized since the '60s by the presence of animal enclosures which constitute one of the main factors of attraction; currently it hosts a variety of theme areas including CerviAvventura, an Adventure Park with treetop trails.
The Redevelopment Project aims at the design of facilities for supporting a new range of recreational and cultural programs, respecting the natural environment and enhancing its scenic value: new entrance areas and a bicycle path which crosses the Park and connects it with the broader system of bicycle routes of the Cervia urban and rural territory; transformation of the former enclosure for goats and mouflons in a petting zoo; installations and furniture for recreational functions.
Visual design is conceived as a fundamental aspect of the project, tightly integrated with the equipment and landscape architecture and acts as a narrative echo, sewing the heterogeneous episodes of the park that are stratified over the years. A special study was therefore dedicated to the relationship between images, materials and colors, trying to give the places a "natural" look and at the same time a clear, ironic and playful aesthetics.