The quarter of San Leonardo in Massa was realized between 1962 and 1965 in the second seven years period of the INA Casa’s program, that deeply signed the Italian reconstruction after the second world war. The intervention considers a peripheral area, a typical character of the INA Casa’s realizations, in the province of Massa Carrara, in the municipality of Massa. It is influenced by the International style’s standards and presents building typologies that include two and three floors in line buildings, with reinforced concrete frame structure and flat roofs; the coverings are in plaster, bricks or in reinforced concrete panels. The plan, characterized by an undoubted attention to town planning aspects that underlines the intervention’s quality compared to the others in the same area, was projected by the professor Edoardo Detti’s group and identifies two ordering elements: a visual axis towards the Frigido river and an irregular shaped central plaza, designed as an aggregation point for the whole quarter. In the project fundamental importance has the services’ presence, as a nursery-school and some shops that are connected by green areas with facilities for the kids’ games and for all the inhabitants, that lead to a walk along the river’s embankment, that laps the eastern side of the quarter.Today, although the negligence of the green areas, the non-realization of all the services foreseen in the project and the buildings’ deterioration, continues to be, especially in the external areas, a sensation of research of quality of life unknown to contemporary interventions.
