The project area is one of the most frequented but the least observed in our urban landscape: a roundabout at a highway tollgate. The place - the junction for Lake Garda - is one of the busiest along the axis connecting Italy and northern Europe for both tourist and commercial traffic. The design programme is ambitious but at the same time clear: to make the gateway to lower Garda identifiable and give identity to this junction between a wide modern infrastructure and a territorial context rich in history and suggestions, but fragmented in a shapeless sprawl.

The project links together, in an essential way, the many suggestions provided by the context. On the one hand it resumes the use of corten steel, introduced by Pietro Porcinai in the roadscape of the Autobrennero, as one of the most innovative and at the same time identifying materials of his project for “the inclusion of the highway in the landscape”, while on the other hand it alludes to the southerns Benaco’s foothills, echoing the rows of cypresses, the water of the lake and the ammonitic red stratifications of the surrounding mountains.