Imbarcadero and Lakefront of Campione. Ode to tradition through public space design

For the new paving of the pedestrian lakefront, which is being widened by reducing the roadway, architect Dario Banaudi, in charge of the redevelopment project for this section of Campione, chooses alternating slabs of white granite from Montorfano and red porphyry from Cuasso al Monte, to create continuity with the inner streets of the center that feature the same materials. A widening is made in front of the Oratory of St. Peter that reconstitutes the Platea Sancti Petri of medieval documents

This square extended to the lake and its space is now recovered architecturally with the widening of the sidewalk in front of the corner building and the construction of a small square with a fountain with bench; fountain and seat are usual signs of a meeting place. The column with the fountain's snake is meant to evoke the similar one found in Sant'Ambrogio in Milan, to the abbots of which Campione belonged until the last century, a fact that determined its history and political-territorial situation

The new structure of the Imbarcadero consists of a canopy of metal beams, supported by tie rods, painted white, with a green parsol glass roof, which filters the sun's rays. This canopy does not have the exclusive function of protecting the boarding, but is intended to build a bright "covered plaza," in visual contact with the view and the sky, as another element that characterizes, just as in historic plazas, the sheltered gathering place

Included in the Imbarcadero are a small ticket office, spaces sheltered by glass walls for waiting, and a double telephone booth that serves as a traffic island for entry and exit. The only masonry element, trapezoidal, is taken from the pre-existing structure, which constitutes a historical "Como" suggestion, recalling the buttresses of Como's war memorial