The post Residence Restoration in Nicosia was originally published on ek magazine | Architectural Publications | ek magazine – Architectural Publications.

Architect Amelia Tavella has just completed the rehabilitation and extension of the Convent Saint-François, in Santa-Lucia di Tallano, Corsica. This partially ruined building from 1480, listed as a historical monument, had been abandoned for a very long time.

“I believe in higher and invisible forces. The Convent of Saint Francis of Saint Lucia in Tallano, built in 1480, is part of this belief. Housed high up, on its promontory, it was a defensive castle before being a place of prayer, of retreat, chosen by monks aware of the absolute beauty of the site. Faith rallies to the sublime. 

With its back to the cemetery, it overlooks the village it is watching. It has a front and a backstage. An olive grove is like a collar at its feet, a happy garden of heavenly food. In front, the spectacle of the Corsican mountains, a dizzying merry-go-round of passes and ridges that seem to move in the direction of the clouds and change their dress with the seasons. Here pulses the heart of Alta Roca. The beauty there is religious, supernatural.

Nature has grown inside the building, slipping between the stones, and then transformed into a plant armor that protects against erosion and collapse. A fig tree is included in the facade. The horn, the wood, the roots become structural, replacing the lime which would not have withstood the test of time. An essential component of the historic monument, we have honored this nature which will have long protected the dormant building before its resurrection.We have chosen to keep the ruins and replace the torn part, the phantom part, in copper work, which will become the House of the Territory. I walked in the footsteps of the past, connecting beauty to faith, faith to art, moving minds from before to a form of modernity that never alters or destroys. The ruins are marks, vestiges, imprints, they also tell the foundations and a truth, they were beacons, cardinal points, directing our axes, our choices, our volumes. Building after ruins is the past and modernity embracing each other, making the promise never to betray each other. One becomes the other and no one is erased. It is an interweaving of an older time in a new time which does not undo, which does not recompose, but which links, attaches, grabs, two unknown and not foreign parts, one of which becomes the extension of the other. in a sort of transfiguration. I have always built this way on my Corsican island, like an archaeologist who brings together what was and what is and what will happen; I do not remove, I hang, bind, affix, slide, resting on the initial ground, on the original work: the copper reveals the stone, the monument and it sacralizes the ruiniform and poetic state. The ruin is like the radiographic image of a structure polished and undone by time and suddenly magnified because it is raised and held by a reversible frame, a light frame, itself doomed to transform, to become a second skin and to possess a story. I liked the idea of a possible return to ruin, that the copper could be undone – this possibility is a courtesy, a respect, to the past, to Corsican heritage.I built the Maison du Territoire by aligning myself with the original massing. By mimicry, I reproduced the silhouette of the pre-existing building. Like the mountain scene, I retraced the blueprint, concerned with a symmetry of Beauty, nothing should strike the eye. I am haunted by the obvious. Each work is a work of love. Love of the place, of the building, of its mutation as one could say of a species which transforms itself from what it has been. The copper allowed a gesture of softness, it is feminine like stone. Unlike granite, however, it approaches its grandeur, by its preciousness and its propensity to capture the light, to reflect it, sending it back to the sky like the prayers of the monks and the faithful who address themselves to the Most High. 

Its moucharabiés direct the light inwards, light captured and diffused as if it were passing through the stained-glass window of a church. A noble and dazzling material in the first sense of the term, copper transforms the place into an experience. The sun falls there and carries away.”

Amelia Tavella

The post Convent Saint-François was originally published on ek magazine | Architectural Publications | ek magazine – Architectural Publications.

The house, in the center of Valetta, was redesigned by the architect to accommodate his house and studio. The first phase involved restoring the building to its original design, save a giant skylight in the sala nobile. While the lower levels embrace the existing structure and features tiles, apertures and textures, the penthouse is a contemporary counterpart, defined by contrasts between soft and hard materials, light and shade, solids and voids.

The ground floor, with its vaulted entrance, acts as the main reception, whilst the arched basement is used as a model/prototyping workshop. With the construction of the upper levels, a lift enclosed in a steel and wired glass cage was placed within the courtyard, framing composed views as you ascend. The first floor contains the studio, the second acts as buffer zone. With this being between office and home, formal and informal are catered for. The concrete slab in the sala nobile is thus able to withstand a dance party of thirty people in motion. It is a space without strict function, an architectural library and a music room, a home theatre and a presentation facility, a place for power naps and late-night chats.

The new extension sits on two pre-cast concrete beams, which shift the entire weight of the penthouse onto the side party-walls, thus freeing the house from any additional load. Their inclusion was central to the transformation, but with it came various concerns. Cost aside, they were especially difficult to transport and install on a restricted site, surrounded by historic buildings and narrow streets. Considering their narrow, ribbed form, they were also not easy to design in terms of structural proportions and external skin.

The insertion of the beams was the culmination of excitement as they were slotted in, Lego-like. Subsequently, there was the designing and fitting of the steel railings, which follow the direction of the serrated edges of the beams. Their aesthetic success lies in their surface – cast over a carpet of timber slats – which gives them an ethereal, lightweight appearance in the sunlight, billowy and curtain-like. The master bedroom’s continuous, low window is sensitive to mood, with morning light bouncing off the oak floors, and a ten-metre long line of cacti, you are compelled to look outwards, whether in bed or taking a shower. The penthouse above the bustle of the street feels expansive, liberating. The folding living room doors pack up in a steel-unit which blurs the line between interior and exterior. Natural light fills the entire space from every wall, foliage and trees frame the rooftop views, with both harbours beyond.

The sense of playfulness is demonstrated in the ‘tree house’, a low space located above the kitchen, where the children can be close by. The kitchen is the heart of this home, with a stainless-steel workbench that allows the cook to access tools in an efficient cooking-work triangle.

Chris Briffa Αrchitects

Aldo Amoretti

The post Casa bottega was originally published on ek magazine | Architectural Publications | ek magazine – Architectural Publications.