Colletta Architecttonico

The project for the architectural restoration of the medieval village of Colletta di Castelbianco was entrusted to the architect Giancarlo De Carlo, one of the foremost international authorities in the field of restoration.

One of the main problems which had to be faced and resolved was that of providing the buildings with modern comforts: heating systems, humidity, and compliance with current regulations are all aspects of the general problem of restoring an old structure for new inhabitants whose lifestyles and needs are fundamentally different from those for whom it was originally built.

De Carlo also had to confront the delicate problem of the installation of advanced communications technology within the ancient fabric of the village. De Carlo's conclusions were exciting: "because it is concerned with the nature of materials and the techniques for putting them together, an ancient construction system such as that used for stone is more suited to the installation of advanced - and therefore lightweight - technology than to the installation of the heavy technologies still generally used in modern building".

The village is not immediately visible from the road, partly because it is in defilade, but still more because the structure of the buildings is not distinguishable at first sight from the ground, which descends to the valley in the steps typical of Liguria. The different cells of which the dwellings are composed are of almost the same measurements as the steps, in both plane and height, and they descend in a similar way. And the colour is also similar, because they are built with local stone for both walls and roof.

The way the cells are aggregated is typical of a crustacean organism which grows slowly adapting itself to the support, itself organic, on which it rests. Each cell merges with those that surround it in all directions: horizontal, vertical, oblique, ascending or descending. Small groups of cells constitute the dwellings, which therefore develop as sequences of variable configuration. What does not change, or changes very little, is the dimension of each cell. This is due to the coherence between the characteristics of the space and the technology used to define it. In addition to the walls, the vaults are also of stone and this fixes their dimension within a limited range of variation.

The various dwellings do not, in fact, have boundaries, or only imperceptible ones. One can therefore imagine - and this happened in the past - that they can extend or retract according to the needs of those living in them. Looking at them today from the outside, one common characteristic they share is that, because of the differences in level, each of their cells gets light from all useful directions and the groups of cells of which they are constituted face onto terraces which correspond to the roofs of the cells below and which once served to dry the products of the earth in the hot season. Another characteristic which it is important to note is that the open spaces dedicated to roads, squares and steps are of dimensions that correspond completely to those of the cells which combine to form the dwellings. Apart from the same dimensions, they also have the same types of boundary and the same aggregative qualities. This is a rather rare characteristic, especially in a period in which the correspondence between open and closed, empty and full, seems to have been lost in architecture.

The project that has been prepared aims to restore the village to make it habitable once more. The inhabitants will not be the same, in the sense that they will not have the same activities or the same way of life as those who were there in remote times, because the reasons for which the village was abandoned have certainly not vanished. They will probably not even be tourists in the sense commonly given to this mode of being and travelling. They may be people or families who want to find an immediate and in any case comfortable way of life, for long periods or for vacations not necessarily tied to the seasons.

The problem, therefore, was to reconstruct dwellings of various sizes and types without altering the "genetic code" that governed the growth of the village in the past. In reality, not much had to be done; it was only necessary to follow the logic of the systems of construction, aggregation and composition. Reconnecting the various parts of the "crustacean" following criteria as close as possible to new housing requirements, repairing worn out parts, adapting the whole, as far as possible, to current rules and regulations; providing systems that are "light" in order not to conflict with the system of construction and composition, but at the same time are as sophisticated as possible in order to offer the future inhabitants the twofold advantages of tranquillising isolation and a constant capability to establish relations with the outside world in the best way possible.

In carrying out the design work it was a surprise to discover that the adaptations were relatively easy and that the "crustacean" system on which the work was being done was much more docile and reactive than the "vertebrate" systems in general use in contemporary architecture. The ability to understand the "genetic code" and the way in which it generated spatial events was of essential importance.

The other surprise was finding confirmation, more than in other cases, that an ancient construction system such as that using stone, with its precise laws imposed by the nature of the materials and the techniques of putting them together, better supports the insertion of advanced and therefore light technology than insertion of the heavy technology still generally used in contemporary buildings.

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