porto mercandini

Our priority was to offer rather an unobtrusive design to some extent amalgamating with the character of the surrounding natural banks and adopting some features of these park paths at the same time (upgraded to clay-bound macadam paths in the future). That is why we design a system of variable curved low steps; the footprint of their rises considerably adopts the shape of the water level and continuously expands along the radial axis of the most frequented visitor access. These steps ´vanish´ into the hill at both ends of these curves. The boat port is, on the contrary, a clear and acknowledged new formation. It makes use of its connection to the access staircase visitors can safely use to ascend to the water level. Boat services (hiring, embarking, and returning) are provided from the ´floating jetties´ – that is from several separate oval platforms; boats ´park´ between them fixed against sailing away by a chain with a unique bayonet cap as part of the hiring system. The shape of service jetties is inspired by the structure of a water lily’s skeleton. They are platforms made from massive steel sheet (galvanised or stainless steel) with laser-perforated eyes 3-6 cm in diameter. The riser is bent steel sheet; threads filled with clay are reinforced with hot-dip zinc-coated expanded metal sheet (this prevents water logging of steps). We built the functional organisation of the boat hire on the idea of the low-cost operation. Therefore, we excluded all those solutions that would require staff permanently present here. We were looking for an automatic self-service system. The inspiring idea that showed up as quite easily transferable and applicable was the municipal cycle hiring scheme.