In recent years, many architectural firms are adding deteriorated urban districts to their more known work of designing office buildings, residential housing, cultural institutions, athletic stadiums and airports. In Italy, London-based architectural firm Zaha Hadid Architects announced plans to design a masterplan for Napoli Porta Est, reconnecting Naples’ fragmented eastern end.

© BrickVisual, Felix Render ZHA

Zaha Hadid Architects is one of the world’s largest architectural and design firms, boasting an extensive portfolio in redesigning older, failing neighborhoods while helping local residents, business venues and public spaces, with expectations of profitable cultural attractions.

ZHA aims to reconnect Napoli Porta Est’s fragmented urban fabric. This area currently suffers from a lack of integration of its urban fabric, resulting in the closing of its heavy industries from the rest of the city over the past decade. Isolated and considered unsafe, the district’s inadequate public spaces, as well as its physical and psychological barriers, has hindered mobility and social interaction.

© BrickVisual, Felix Render ZHA

Considered a derelict industrial zone, the new masterplan for Napoli Porta Est will introduce infrastructure to adapt to the area, create new urban parks, allow a disused railway yard for public use and resolve the significant traffic congestion at one of Naples’ primary interchanges. This interchange serves as a gateway to the Italian national transport network, better connecting with the historic center of Naples, thus allowing for better access for tourism and cultural events.

Removing the barrier created by the large number of unused railyards, the masterplan will enable more than 75 acres of abandoned industrial buildings, including the former Manifattura Tabacchi factory and other derelict buildings in the Feltrinelli industrial zone, to be transformed for residential use.

© BrickVisual, Felix Render ZHA

ZHA’s masterplan also offers additional opportunities for the city by enabling the future conversion of a further 247 acres of the district’s obsolete oil depot into a new city quarter with civic spaces and amenities for the local community. The site is a former maintenance railyard at the eastern edge of the city and its industrial zone; it has been abandoned and derelict for decades and is currently one of Europe’s largest urban regeneration projects.

The overall masterplan reconnects several neighboring zones of the City of Naples, which developed as disparate, isolated areas over past decades: Centro Direzionale, Napoli Centrale Train Station, Mercato and Oriental Zone, with a design prioritizing pedestrians and a multimodal transport interchange below ground.

Defining its design, the masterplan follows the established urban plan of Naples to promote the city’s sustainable future as the civic, cultural, economic and transport center of southern Italy.