A forest on concrete: Benedetta Tagliabue renaturalizes a station in Naples

NaplesA stark landscape in old Naples: the Centro Direzionale, the business center designed by Japanese architect Kenzō Tange in the 1980s, is a stark platform flanked by skyscrapers. Concrete everywhere. The Naples Palace of Justice comprises a low, brutalist-style building and three other towers. One side of one of the skyscrapers is painted from top to bottom with portraits, a small attempt to humanize the place. Across the road is Poggioreale prison, known as the Camorra prison, one of the most complex penitentiary centers in the country. Among all these buildings, a few months ago, stood a structure by architect Benedetta Tagliabue: the Centro Direzionale metro station, which stands as an act of rebellion against its surroundings.

The regulations for a metro station are strict, but Tagliabue wanted to renaturalize the site and humanize it with a curved wooden roof. It might remind one of the Santa Catalina Market in Barcelona, ​​designed by Tagliabue herself and Enric Miralles (1955-2000), but she insists this one is very "different." In one of the project sketches, the roof appears superimposed on the profile of Mount Vesuvius. "It's not just a covered forest, so to speak, but the roof creates a plaza whose interior is very bright. In winter it protects you from the elements, but you can still see the sky, and in summer it protects you from the heat," Tagliabue explains. To achieve this, she had to break with the way Tange had conceived the different levels. "The station isn't just a place of transit; you can also linger and enjoy it, use the public space, almost like a museum. The spaces allow for diverse activities. For example, there are stairs that can function as bleachers," says the architect.

Tagliabue's visit is quite an event: without prior notice, the University of Naples Federico II has summoned dozens of architecture students who listen attentively to her explanations. The scene seems straight out of a noisy neorealist film: smiling throughout, Tagliabue tours the station, explaining things in Catalan, Italian, and Spanish to a group of city officials, students, and a group of Italian and Catalan journalists, the latter having come specifically from Barcelona.

One of the most unusual moments comes when one of the city councilors takes his cell phone out of his pocket to show Tagliabue a coat of arms of the Kingdom of Naples and tell her that the colors she chose for the platforms—red, purple, orange, and yellow—are taken from Pompeian paintings, some of whose figures adorn the lobby and especially the platforms. Tagliabue catches the councilor off guard when she reminds him that they still have the artistic intervention to complete, which, as in Santa Caterina, is meant to decorate the roof. "The figures that adorn the station are taken from the ancient Roman world. We wanted to evoke the scene of the discovery of some frescoes during subway construction in Rome, in Fellini's film, which then disappear," the architect concludes.

A project that began in 2004

The Centro Direzionale station has a long history: the project began over twenty years ago when, in 2004, the city of Naples, under the motto "Architecture, Archaeology, and Art," invited various international studios to design the stations for a new metro line. In addition to Tagliabue's firm, the proposals included Norman Foster, Massimiliano Fuksas, Álvaro Siza, Dominique Perrault, and Karim Rashid. Of all of them, Foster's proposal was the only one that did not come to fruition, and another Catalan architect, Òscar Tusquets, designed a station on Via Toledo. Later, the construction of Centro Direzionale was fraught with obstacles that caused delays, including a lack of funding, labor disputes within the public sector, and the COVID-19 pandemic.

Another aspect of the Centro Direzionale station is that Tagliabue and his collaborators at the EMBT studio took advantage of the existing infrastructure, about which very little information was available. In fact, another reason for choosing wood was that the weight the structure could bear was unknown, and this was discovered through on-site testing. A great deal of unforeseen consolidation work had to be done. "It's not just about carrying out a complex project, but also about the fact that the regulations changed many times over the years," says architect Paolo Giardiello, who was Tagliabue's local partner, along with his wife, Marella Santangel, also an architect and Dean of Architecture at the University of Naples Federico II. "Safety regulations changed and became stricter, and we had to modify part of the project. Fire safety regulations and seismic building codes for this type of wooden structure also changed," Giardiello explains. But neither Tagliabue nor they gave up. "From that structure, which turned out so beautifully, we ended up with three finished versions—not just three concept versions, but three truly finished versions—that could have been built at any time, because something was always changing and we had to adapt it again. We all worked on it for a long time," Giardiello recalls.

"From concrete, a forest grows," Tagliabue says, summarizing the whole thing. Since it opened, the station has received several international awards, including the 2026 BIG SEE Architecture Awards in the infrastructure category and first prize at The Plan Award 2025, as well as the ARPAFIL award in Mexico, where the station has been recognized as one of the most outstanding projects completed in recent years. It has also been a finalist and selected for the EU Mies van der Rohe Awards and the FAD 2025 Awards. According to several local media outlets, the station cost approximately 43 million euros, of which 20 million were for the civil engineering work, 9 million for the installations, 7 million for the finishes, and another 7 million for the landscaping.

Attending to students at the Palau Gravina

Tagliabue's day doesn't end at the station: in the afternoon, she gives a talk about the station and other projects in the main lecture hall of the Architecture Department at the Palau Gravina. The room is packed. During the question-and-answer session, some students, with the rebellious spirit of challenging the masters, challenge her. Tagliabue accepts, but doesn't identify with the label of star architect. "After Enric Miralles' death, Benedetta did extraordinary work, first to rebuild her individuality as an architect," says Marella Santangelo, who highlights "her experimentation with materials and forms, with lightness and in very light, transparent forms." She also emphasizes her connection to the "human" aspect of architecture.

Santangelo and Tagliabue met in 1990 and have grown together "at a distance." "Enric was a magnificent person, probably one of the geniuses of 20th-century world architecture. Figures like him occupy a lot of space, and Benedetta did exceptional work, and she did it through architecture," explains Santangelo. "Benedetta has a very international spirit," he concludes, "and in recent years her connection..."