CIMdata PLM Industry Summary Online Archive
31 July 2008
Implementation Investments
Genoa, Italy, Selects Bentley Systems to Facilitate Sustainable Development Plan
The city of Genoa, Italy, has selected Bentley Systems, Incorporated, to be the exclusive technology sponsor of the new Genoa Urban Lab. The announcement was made today during a ceremony at Galata Museo del Mare, Genoa. The mission of the new lab, which was designed by 1998 Pritzker Architecture Prize laureate Renzo Piano, is to create a sustainable development plan for the city. Bentley will provide the Urban Lab project team with MicroStation, Bentley Map, Bentley Descartes, Bentley Architecture, GenerativeComponents, Bentley Structural, and GEOPAK Site software to help it prepare new urban planning regulations and create an integrated development plan that will encompass Genoa’s strategic city projects; infrastructure; seaport; surrounding natural environment; and cultural and historical asset improvements. The company will also provide software training through its Bentley LEARN program – which gives organizations unlimited access to OnDemand eLearning from the Bentley Institute – and will help furnish the lab. The Urban Lab is located on the 28-meter-long Studio-Ship created for the project and docked at Port Antico.
Commenting on this strategic initiative, Genoa Mayor Marta Vincenzi said, “Municipalities large and small need to think differently in the face of challenges such as global warming, shrinking supplies of natural resources, rapidly accelerating demand for infrastructure in developing nations, and growing shortages of new talent entering the engineering professions. Today, the goal must always be to design and build sustainable infrastructure that sustains society and the environment.
“In establishing the Genoa Urban Lab we have gathered some of the top design and urban planning minds from around the world. Their keen insight and vision, coupled with the advanced capabilities of Bentley’s solutions for the lifecycle of infrastructure, will enable us to create an innovative and effective plan that respects the city’s different environments by establishing firm boundaries between built areas, green areas, and blue or seaside areas. Quality growth will replace quantity growth, and our design philosophy will be to ‘build on built’ rather than to encroach further on our precious natural environments.”
Said Bentley COO Malcolm Walter, “The mission of the Urban Lab is very much in alignment with our own mission at Bentley: to provide solutions to design, build, and operate the world’s infrastructure with the goals of sustaining our society, sustaining our environment, and sustaining the infrastructure professions – the architects and engineers, the surveyors and planners, and the contractors and operators who play a key role in sustaining infrastructure.
The Urban Lab project team is comprised of highly experienced members of Genoa’s mapping department as well as some of the brightest young architects and engineers from leading universities. The team is guided by a small group of renowned architectural and urban planning experts called the “Table of Ideas.” The group is led by Piano and also includes Oriol Bohigas, an award-winning architect widely recognized for his work on the Barcelona Olympics; Amanda Burden, chair of the New York City Planning Commission and director of the Department of City Planning; and 2007 Pritzker Architecture Prize laureate Richard Rogers, former chief advisor on architecture and urbanism to the mayor of London.
Among those participating in today’s Urban Lab ceremony were Renzo Piano, renowned French architect Jean Nouvel, Mayor Vincenzi, and Malcolm Walter.
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