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Architects: C+C04STUDIO
- Year: 2006
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Photographs:Luigi Manca
Text description provided by the architects. The building is located in the city of Quartu S. Elena: a conurbation a few miles away from Cagliari. Despite the municipal development plan classifies the site as part of an area characterized by a consolidated fabric, the construction activities, mostly aimed at the construction of family houses and small apartment buildings, has produced in the nineties signs of transformation of the urban fabric. Incidents of illegal, poor quality control, reduced maintenance on existing buildings, the street and adjacent neighborhoods make a pleasant environment in terms of architecture and urban planning certainly not unattractive.
The site was previously occupied by a house whose postwar construction patio structure was inspired by the historical typology of rural homes south of Sardinia: the "house campidanese”. The low quality of construction and architecture of the building led to its demolition and the creation of a new volume in the system is determined by the memory-traces of the original. The building, which houses five apartments and a small office, is aligned on the street line and is designed with a "L" shape. The entrances of the apartments are located in the courtyard, which, though borrowed from the traditional building type, evolves to suit the contemporary use of collective housing.
The strict building regulations have significantly affected the main design choices, including the obligation of the vertical road openings and placement of volumes in lot. The project therefore, in dealing with the building regulations, plays on the use of the materials used in the main facade (plaster and concrete slabs of corten steel cladding). The corten surface is the element that leads from the courtyard, according to a logic of continuity and it is not interrupted by external staircase positioned slightly detached from the building.
