La casa sottile - On site

The Thin house is a gap filling project in the existing urban fabric of the historic centre of San Giorgio del Sannio, a municipality in the province of Benevento.
Located in an urban environment distorted by a series of anonymous edifices built in the 1980s, the existing building in question comes up as the last piece of an urban fabric, that has now lost its value.
Peculiar elements of the Italian architecture of the early twentieth century are featured in the existing building, both in the constituent components of the structure and in its typological and morphological characteristics: the perimeter bearing walls and the wooden beams define a small space - 4.5 m wide by 15 m long - whose elevation reaches a height of 9 meters on the ridge line.
Because of its state of complete decay and neglect, this urban piece is replaced. In place of it, a new building is realised: its design aims to establish a dialogue with southern Italy’s building tradition through a contemporary re-interpretation of its characteristic elements. Cornices, stringcourses, splays, pitched roof and dormers are organised in an organic layout, thus allowing the new urban piece to keep alive the link with its past.

La casa sottile è un intervento di sostituzione di un tassello del centro storico di San Giorgio del Sannio; l’edificio esistente, pur trovandosi in una situazione di degrado e abbandono, mostra sia negli elementi costitutivi la struttura che nelle sue caratteristiche tipologiche e morfologiche i tratti peculiari delle architetture di inizio 900: murature perimetrali portanti e travi in legno definiscono uno spazio dalle ridotte dimensioni in pianta, solo 4,5 m di larghezza per 15 m di lunghezza, che si eleva in alzato sino a 9 m sulla linea di colmo.
In seguito agli stravolgimenti urbanistici che ha subito l’area in cui si trova, questo edificio essendo l’ultimo tassello di un tessuto urbano completamento snaturato, sembra essere quasi un’intercapedine, un elemento estraneo al contesto caratterizzato da edifici anonimi realizzati negli anni 80.
Il fine di questo intervento è il dialogo con la tradizione costruttiva dell’Italia meridionale e la reinterpretazione in chiave contemporanea degli elementi che la caratterizzano. Cornici, marcapiani, strombature, tetto a falde ed abbaino sono tutti elementi presenti nel progetto, che assemblati in un disegno organico attribuiscono all’edificio un’immagine contemporanea, pur non disdegnando il legame con il passato.

Temp: An urban emergency pavilion

Design Team: Dimitra Chatziandreou, Gian Luca Petroselli, Giuseppe Vultaggio

http://www.gvultaggio.it/temp

Temp is an emergency pavilion, designed to meet the needs of a population after a natural disaster. Usually, when it comes to emergency situations, designers tend to focus on providing temporary housing solutions, neglecting the fact that a space which is able to host communal activities can actually contribute to the reconstruction of the social fabric. That kind of spaces enable people to meet, talk, play and carry out activities that will utterly contribute to sheltering one’s identity, thus to social cohesion. The pavilion consists of a three-dimensional framework of metal tubes (scaffold tubes) that forms an enclosing square, intended to host public events. The peripheral structure (0.90m wide) incorporates a variety of wooden modules of different functions: First aid, changing rooms–storage, education, meditation, playground and living. In-between these modules, there are removable elements, anchored to the framework, hosting secondary functions: Relaxation, gardening and memory...

Under the shield, Sedhiou, Senegal

http://www.gvultaggio.it/under-the-shield

Design team: Dimitra Chatziandreou, Natasa Ferentinou, Giuseppe Vultaggio

The Sedhiou cultural center consists of five volumes arranged around an interior court, imagined as fragments that were generated by the decomposition of an elliptical building. The original form is recomposed only in the canopy, taking the form of a large colored shield.
The five buildings will function respectively as one multifunctional hall for events and performances (220sqm), three rooms dedicated to education and training (132sqm), an exhibition center (110sqm), toilets (40sqm) and an office (48sq.m).
Pedestrian paths penetrate the elliptical form, creating secondary common yards attached to the main square and towards all directions. The purpose of these spaces is to attract the citizens of Sedhiou to the center of the building, so they can use the inner court as a public square.
The cultural center will be built using only local materials. The buildings will be constructed with clay bricks and wooden beams, coated with natural earth-based plaster afterwards.
The walls have a thickness of 45cm in order to preserve the internal temperature as cool as possible, without the use of mechanical air - conditioning.
The canopy is made by colored wooden logs and slats, built on site, according to local craft techniques, while the outdoor space is made of clay, using shells as inert. In order to identify the path towards the main space, there is a number of laterite bricks inserted as seen in the master plan.
The canopy protects the building from the sun by reflecting its rays, while at the same time it allows the rainwater to pass through the wooden slats and be collected. After the water passes through the canopy, it is collected on the flat roofs and directed to underground tanks for future use inside the buildings.