The Piazza d'Italia

The Piazza d'Italia

EMAD HANI ISMAEEL

                 Ph.D. in Technologies for the Exploitation

                 of the Cultural Heritage .

                 Senior Lecturer in the Dept. of ArchitectureE-mail:        emadhanee@yahoo.com

                 College of Engineering , University of Mosul 

                 Mosul - Iraq .

                  emadhanee@gmail.com

Web Site:   http://sites.google.com/site/emadhanee/

                  http://emadhani.blogspot.com/

Tel :           +964 (0)770 164 93 74

 

The Piazza d'Italia is an urban public plaza located at Lafayette and Commerce Streets in downtown New Orleans, Louisiana. It is controlled by the Piazza d'Italia Development Corporation, a subdivision of New Orleans city government. Completed in 1978 according to a design by noted post-modernist Charles Moore and Perez Architects^[1] of New Orleans, the Piazza d'Italia debuted to widespread acclaim on the part of artists and architects. Deemed an architectural masterpiece even prior to its completion, the Piazza in fact began to rapidly deteriorate as the development surrounding it was never realized. By the turn of the new millennium, the Piazza d'Italia was largely unfrequented by and unknown to New Orleanians, and was sometimes referred to as the first "postmodern ruin". The conversion of the adjacent Lykes Center to the Loews Hotel, New Orleans, completed in 2003, was accompanied by the full restoration of the Piazza d'Italia (accomplished by 2004).