The project at hand is the rebuilding and reorganisation of a ruin in the small village of Cristinacce, Corsica, to create three city-owned apartments.

The project follows three axes:

Firstly, there is a social aspect to it as not-only it is city-owned, but the typologies are different to respond to the diversity of situations within Corsican villages.

Secondly, you find an environmental angle as it is a now pressing matter for the whole island. This building is dimmed “low-carbon”, which makes it the first of its kind in Corsica.

Finally, the architectural aspect of the project of course, which lies in the form of a contemporary construction that fits the needs of modern life but in the midst of an old, traditional fabric, ever present in our small villages.

There is an act of resistance to the approach of building three social dwellings in a small village as it aims also at fighting against the depopulation inland. Offering high quality dwellings for lower a population with lower income is even greater.

The project is characterized by a structure and a surface mainly wood-made, thus really setting the building in our times. There was also the purpose of further integrating the modern volumes and shape, considering the material unity and sobriety of the façades. Furthermore, the architecture of the building allows us to create wide openings, necessary to meet the environmental standards as well as framing the views on the mountains afar.

Advocating the merits of a wood channel, industry, in Corsica could no longer be necessary as it is a material that you don’t only find in abundance across the island, but it also is a wood of the highest quality. Nevertheless, we still wanted to champion the local craftsmanship and point out the fact that despite wood being in a plenty, difficulties in building with such a simple material can still arise because of the lack of drying units in Corsica. Indeed, the majority of the wood being used has to be dried and transformed, either on the mainland or in Italy.

The project is looking into providing immediate answers to the issues at hand. In order to do this, the building methods we have looked into had to be precise and to integrate the fact that the wood we would use would not reach the required 13% humidity rate, as it is normally the case in all traditional wooden structures. Doing so, we avoided shipping the wood on the mainland, lowering the carbon footpring of the project at the same time.

Hence, in beign very demanding with regard to the whole process, we wanted to ensure that the project would be exemplary in all aspects. This project is socially and environmentally sound, promoting endemic resources (the wood used in Laricio pine tree) and it participate to repopulate the inland parts of Corsica.

Orma Architettura

The post Municipal Housing in Corsica was originally published on ek magazine | Architectural Publications | ek magazine – Architectural Publications.

Overlooking the village of Casamaccioli, “a Casa Vanella” is a guest house nested in a natural landscape in the heart of Corsica, in front of three major summits: Monte Cinto, the Paglia Orba, and Cima a i Mori.

The program involved the creation of common spaces, a dining room and lounge areas, as an extension of the main house which accommodates the guests’ bedrooms. The idea was to detach the extension from the house and to situate it in the back of the plot, against a retaining wall in front of the village and the row of mountains. The extension is placed in the back of the “casone” (the family house), which occupies the center of the plot. The architects’ consideration was to integrate the new building in the site without imposing a gesture; instead, the objective was to highlight the particularities inscribed in the project itself.

Lit by the western sun, a Casa Vanella lies in the middle of a unique, timeless landscape. Walls of granite and slate line the chestnut-punctured plots. These majestic trees dazzle with their colors throughout the seasons, until they bare their branches at winter.

As if it were an inhabited retaining wall, the building frames the main constituting elements of the landscape. Three openings are oriented towards each of the three summits. The building becomes landscape, it becomes a place of contemplation, where the sun mediates between a space and its respective summit. In that sense, every evening of the year the setting sun makes those spaces unique.

Through this landscape in constant evolution, the architects wanted to create a project suggesting a duality; a duality between inside and outside. A first glance, the project barely reveals its openings; it appears like a solid mass of granite. Then, as it unfolds, this wall opens, becomes fragmented in order to allow the outward gaze and invite the light, in a controlled and measured way.

In a different way, the building interacts with time by means of its materiality – concrete and stone. Indeed, the juxtaposition of these elements unravels a narrative about the site, but also about time and technical means. Concrete is used in its truest way, forming posts and lintels. Stone is used as infill at the voids of the structure. Inside, the lime plaster incorporates and conceals the technical infrastructure.

The architecture blends the project to the point of dissolution inside a mineral mass, and leaves untouched the principal building, “u casone”. The project wants to graft itself in time, developing a sensibility between tradition, landscape and architecture.

Orma Architettura

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