Memories from subsoil
The plan of the granaries as hinge of hidden plots
Archeological Museum in Apulia, Italy
Architecture & Restoration, Academic
The attempt is to redefine a new hierarchy of plots, which relates to the
horizontality of the plan of grains
Location
Cerignola, Italy
Year
2017
Institution
Politecnico di MIlano, Master Thesis in Architecture Design
The construction of the territory bears scars tied to the history. The uniqueness of the southern configuration, sees the clinging of different cultures in the territory: Byzantine, Longobard, Spanish, French and Ottoman
influences, maintain a close link with the cereal production and transhumant pastorialism, that, after the Italian Unity outlined “agro-city”, and Cerignola represent the best example of this consolidation.
The plan of the grains is a great void, at the same time it’s a hidden and open-air monument, testimony of the agricultural culture of the territory that sees the intertwining of form urbis and agri form. Built along the axis of the Tratturo Regio, it sees the intersection of the XVI Century, consisting mainly of lamioni on which the main buildings overlook, such as Palazzo Pavoncelli, and to the south the expansion more recent defined by more regular fabric, linked to the axis of the Monte Fornari complex, which defines its axiality.
The project unveil the dominant pattern of Cerignola, through signs,
which are not necessary reconstructive, by introducing a museum route that recreate the settlement fabric through the granary plan:
plots are connected through cognitive paths of hidden architectures, defining a new connection pole
The project moves on two levels of meaning:
In the first place the theme of the project, its original structure, place, program and construction: what comes connects the project from its internal production path, reveal a continuity with the theme of the patio, of the attack on the ground,
of the enclosed, configured as a waste,
figures typical of Mediterranean architecture, declined according to different ways,
and oriented towards a gradual reduction and scarification.
Geometry lead to contemplative attitude, in which the new coexists with the old, establishing subtle communicative links:
it is not opposed, but lives side by side, does not deny or even tolerate, accepts naturally reworking
the shapes in connection with the nature of grains
This time zeroing reveals the project little by little, the path and the modular sequence of the space, the construction of the void, through the contract played by the theme of the gap. Horizontal lines mark the view: both outside and inside.
The building emerges as a monolith that fades into the surface, generating a shelter that becomes a skeleton that emerges, The verticality is marked by the contrast between emergence and immersion of architecture,
playing on the role of the pits as a hypogeum.
The patio is revisited and reinterpreted as a dialectic game between interior and exterior, generating complex spatiality, hybridization between external interiority and introjected exteriority, generating a gap, as well as physical, even temporal.
The patio materializes as void, an airy and transparent volume,
whose design is impressed through the representation of its limit
