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Architects: Amelia Tavella
- Area: 1700 m²
- Year: 2023
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Photographs:Thibaut Dini
Text description provided by the architects. Corsican architect Amelia Tavella has recently brought a secret, slumbering castle back to life in her southern homeland, nestled within a Provencal vineyard. Within the castle's 1,600m2 central body, the architect has created a unique and mysterious exhibition space, surrounded by a dozen exclusive suites in the two wings of the castle.
The museum space, like the suites, steeped in Amelia Tavella's Mediterranean spirit, is «a path under the alcoves.» «Here, mineral, organic matter pulses. Cut, red, veined, this material resembles flesh. It is naked, chiseled, hollowed out, raw. This skin is offered to the hand that caresses it. It could be alive and beating before our eyes. It could move and embrace us. Walls and floors do not clash; they gaze at each other, extend, and speak of the work of men. Terracotta bricks, stone with split finishes, the solitary wanderer walks in a jewel box, observing, and in turn, will be observed. The power of spaces exists. It carries and protects those who understand the poetry of architecture when it is built in the name of memory. And if the cut stone recalled that of the menhirs dedicated to the sky? And if the vaults and the arrangement of the rooms constituted the geography of a sacred place where we once used to pray? And if the labyrinth of walls were that of a resurrected mythology?»
This place expresses Amelia Tavella's architectural gesture, tied to the sensuality of noble, natural
materials and respect for the past. She describes herself as a symbolic archaeologist, exploring the tracks, signs, and traces of a previous history to build with full fidelity. Nature is always invited, both as an element of the décor and a witness to the origins; it honors the buildings that stand within it and vice versa. The architect has chosen gentleness and poetry for her gesture, never forgetting that buildings are first and foremost meant for those who will live in them. Here, architecture is not a solitary practice; it is dedicated to others, to the collective, embedded in an unchanged territory.
«When I build, I do not undo. There is no betrayal. I proceed by inclusion. Nature invades my projects. It is neither an obstacle nor a constraint; it is my guest whom I celebrate. The Mediterranean is my matrix. I come from there, from this unique place. A child of the maquis and the sands, I learned the complexity of my architectural profession here. Sea, rock, beach—my femininity has embraced the femininity of this sea, working delicately, drawing inspiration from the sediments, soft, original matter. My Mediterranean island taught me light, color, constantly reminding me that there is no valid creation without ethics and that history is the cradle of the present. It is an echo, then a fusion. I use the materials of my south to make it reborn from itself each time. One single word encompasses and gives momentum to my architect's wish: ethics. Thus, my artistic approach is built, connected to my roots, to the origin.»
A room as romantic as this was needed to welcome, for an evening, the drawings of writer Nina Bouraoui, Variations, her vast, deconstructed hearts, veined, composed of fine, intertwined lines reflecting the obsessions, repetitions, defeats, and victories of romantic feelings.
