The planning for the restoration aimed at ‘Protecting and enhancing the architecture and rural landscape’:
- Preserving the values of the historic rural landscape through the protection and enhancement of material and immaterial cultural assets and the maintenance and restoration of the landscape quality of the place;
- Promoting the creation of initiatives and activities linked to sustainable tourist and cultural receptive enjoyment, traditions and local culture.
This type of rural architecture is well identifiable in buildings and settlements that are significant testimonies to the history of rural populations and communities, their traditional agricultural economies, and the evolution of the landscape.
And it is precisely the recovery of such artefacts that crystallises the design criteria on the basic elements through the reinterpretation of the typical architectural language in a decidedly contemporary key.
With regard to the architectural entity of the new artefact, the language and the colour of the materials themselves, the design approach aimed to conserve the existing building and make the changes in such a way that they would be coherent, deeply rooted in the context, and rich in formal references to tradition.
Fully respecting the dry composition of the existing building, the project started from the principle of its total conservation and its enhancement within the new construction.
The new building stands in continuity with the pre-existing building and, enveloping it, emphasises the altimetrical development of the stereometric solid, in a process of aggregation albeit not volumetric.
The compositional choices are of high quality and give the work considerable architectural importance, which can be seen in the revisitation of the expressive languages of tradition, in a simple yet modern reading, as well as in the clarity of the dictation and in the skilful use of the external stone material: with its density it alternates arithmically with the fragility of the voids.
Of particular interest is the imprinted rhythm of the east façade, the one that marks and appears almost like a hint of a dividing wall that ideally continues beyond, to embrace the entire terrain: it is a boundary in the proper sense of the term, whose dimensions, which appear reduced in the vastness of the fields, also acquire a symbolic value.
The façade is characterised by the particular workmanship of the vertical tuff partitions (architectural elements present on the four sides of the building) and the scansion of the openings: square
show a white plaster and reveal the different material composition with the aforementioned elements.
On the sides, beyond the dimensions of the new building, the façade continues in free walls: vertical partitions that rise up interrupted by square openings and end up drawing a colonnade on the south-west side.
The façade becomes a backdrop that tends to dematerialise towards the sides, almost as if seeking contact with the earth, to hide in it its rational, measured presence that is told through geometric lines.
The new building is evident on the opposite side that looks south towards the countryside and enjoys full sunlight, while to the east it leans and protects itself half-hidden in the liminal façade.
It is precisely in the use of the main building materials that the ‘genius loci’ can be found.
This is a continuity that is more cultural than morphological, even if some elements of the local vernacular language can be found in the work, for example: the flat roof, the adoption of large blind wall surfaces in which small window openings peep out, linear lintels, external wall elements in exposed tuff.
The tuff, laid in staggered courses, immediately recalls the expressive language of the local building tradition.
The wall texture is rich in perceptual stimuli, where the chiaroscuro variation of surfaces follows the changing colour and intensity of daylight.
The tufa walls do not merely represent the external-internal mediating element of the house, but also extend beyond their main function, to constitute a structural element as well.
On the east side, the wall is perforated by large openings that frame a splendid view of the sunrise.
On the remaining three sides, trilithic openings symbolically extend the wall apparatus, again allowing one to enjoy the magnificent agricultural panorama framed by the ‘stone squares’.
