The process of design starts from an understanding of the material constrains and of the cultural context where we are called to operate. The goal is a formulation of the primary spatial relations, which have to be preserved as a narrative through the complete process. Then we draw over and over chasing a vision of something that does not exist yet but that already hosts the world we live in and its memory. A result is a space produced through the memory, from which cultivating a solitude able to be engaged with the present. A serene reflection forever imprinted in us.
The purpose of this project is to highlight the coexistence of human, human’s past and the landscape. This wooden house, and many others that are often abandoned, are in this matter the textbooks of life. In the past, beside all agricultural activity, the landscape represented for human, above all, a home and something sacred. People who inhabited the landscape have felt a duty of respect for it. They were deeply tied to the land they lived in, and they understood their existence as very trivial compared to nature. Our endless conquest and building efforts of these days and the desire for the progress have however disrupted these ties. The connection with the places and humility towards the land have disappeared. The space we inhabit today is becoming less and less an inheritance and less and less a place of acquirement.
But to be clear, the purpose of the proposal is not to restore the original state or come back in time. This house had to live its story to this day so that we could start to appreciate it again. By a series of small intervention, I try to form a space suitable for developing new relations and meanings. An extension of the terrace, its interconnection with the garden, a table, a repaired wall from local stone, a bee hive, a meadow, a new tree, a shadow and a bench under it.
I take this proposal as an initial one, as one of many which are going to shape and change over time by opening and using the house. I take it as a part of the project that has no final form. This house desires to remain a reminder of past but also of today’s times and perhaps as well the future. It desires to be a celebration of craft, a reflection of the relationship with the landscape and its changes over time. It longs to be open. So that it can be read as a book.