Architecture of the time
The ring out of this valley is not changed, it's the same silent which someone heard long ago, long before your passing.
Nothing ever happens here. But if you have patience when you stopping, you can understand how the atmosphere you breathe in this place is ancient, it's chimes in ethereal way. It's the architecture who is talking about this.
You can see, towards valley, the bell tower and the historic tower and between them the castle walls. The space between them has something pleasantly melancholy.
Today there are much more woods and you can note some more roofs, maybe too many, but you feel a sensation that make you think that the passing of the time and of its hours and days and seasons, suggests that nothing has changed. This because the silent formed in this space is the same that resonated from hundreds years, to stop it there is the bell tower which products the same full sound expanding in the valley.
From this place the presence of the bell tower is not indifferent. It imposes on the landscape like a strong vertical element able to break the linearity of the surrounding mountains. It conditions the nearby architecture which remains constrained by the constant rhythm of the passage of time, punctuated with extreme precision by the tolling of bells.
It feels the need to bring in to the project the meaning of "Time".
The house is a young building of three floors of the 1933, the ground floor was designed like the place for animals and the upper floors for the lumberyard. It has a square plan with simple geometries made from local stone. It's the same material used also for the neighboring architectures, like the church of the 1646, the tower and the castle walls of the 1300. This is the oldest part of the village.
The project's intention is to plan the time. There is the desire to understand the different way of the perception of the time passage.
At the ground floor there is the kitchen, the most convivial place of the house, a large counter and a solid wood table forming the entrance space to receiving guests. The whole pavement is made of stone slabs, it's the same material that covers every street of the village and it is able to reduce the delimitation between the inside and the outside of a house. The kitchen has four openings very close together which are bringing inside the sunlight and more views of the landscape. In this place the time and its passing are connected to the outside.
At the first floor the pavement changed, the stone become rubble and grit and the separation with the outside becomes stronger.
The big window frames the landscape and like a sundial it marks the passing of hours and seasons. The window frame is internal and it has the bell tower in the middle but retains the gap with the ancient time. It feels a detachment.
The inside space become more private, it welcomes the family, words and sounds become more slight and the time slows down.
At the second floor the pavement changed from stone to wood and openings become thin cuts inside the masonry. The light and sounds are more soft and the atmosphere is suitable for the single person. Here the passing of time slows down further almost to stop.
You can feel gradually the passing of time through a path between the internal floors of the house and the outside. The vertical link is made of a reinforced concrete stairs that become the skeleton of the house with the correa, beams and pillar. The wall behind the stairs is made of stone faced.
To dictate the rhythm of the bearing structure that composes the insole, or the arrangement and size of the beams, there is the pillar of the ground floor which is still on the rock and its base is 30x30 cm. Beams have always the same distance of 30 cm, in this way the interior space has a constant rhythm.
Each material is left in its natural appearance: stone, concrete, wood and iron have their strengths and their flaws.
Outside, in the front, it's clearly visible the ancient from the new. The old openings keep their auxiliary wood roof and the new window has a reinforced concrete beam.
The ancient is not changed and silently the sound of the new intervention is enter.
