In its internal substance the project questions the very nature of architectural space as defined by the boundaries which distinguish interiority from exteriority. The fortress of Cresmina is encircled by a labyrinth enclosure where its legacy and historical signification is embedded into.
The project hypothesizes a condition in which the distinction between architecture and landscape, artificial and natural becomes ambivalent like blurred and imperceptible. Nevertheless, this artificial transformation of nature holds the tension between the inside and the outside spaces.
The architecture gesture is reduced to its minimum and its manifestation is composed by 8 walls. Built out of white prefabricated concrete panels and they reveal, delineate, intersect and structure the site to propose an experience of parkour where the body, always in motion, is in a dialogue between architecture and landscape, between past and present. The natural landscape, the fortress composition – pavement slab, grass, earth, bricks walls – and the traces left on the earth by the flow of people are integrated in the project.
The two components, the garden and the art center, are superimposed and intrinsically linked. The first sets of walls contain the sculpture garden where everything is left determinate. In this open air space, imperceptible interactions subsist. The art center is articulated inside the remaining wall of the fortress. Its ring contains a flexible program which can be adjusted according to the needs (e.g the workshop can transform into dressing area in special events). This programmatic structure wraps the heart of the project: the performance hall.
The 38 doors make the project permeable and the entire parkour can be easily rethought. The selection of openings towards the sea reveals the surrounding beauty actually hidden because it was too obvious in the collective memory. By selecting sequences, the project acts as a frame work of experience. While structuring the void, the site and the view, it guides one’s body and clearly becomes part of the experience itself.
The art center is seen as a garden where ambiguous boundaries pulsate with movement, time and weather. The articulation of those elements makes the project in a metamorphosis state, constantly updated.
