Ex-military Seaplan Base in Marsala-Stagnone

The ex-military seaplane base in Marsala-Stagnone (80'000 m2) is located in Marsala (Sicily), between the former Arabic harbour Punta d’Alga and the nature reserve of Stagnone. It is not considered as it belongs to the city neither to its history, and this is the Lacuna the project works on.

My work takes its place among projects that work with pre-existant buildings, trying to recover, complete or transform missing parts of the original design, within the seminar “Lacuna. To complete, reconstruct, transform architecture” held by Professor Francesco Garofalo. I developed a project on a site that had been forgotten for many years but is potentially full of identitary elements to be read and reinterpreted, which can become means of design. The site studies I could refer to, were always considering the twin hangars by P. L. Nervi, as detached from the context, without any attempt to complete and assimilate the characteristics of the place. Backwards I saw a potential way of transformation through the activation of an identitary recognition of the whole seaplane base, as it was meant to work through its complex yet unitary layout. I reassessed the function of the site as cultural, shared, touristic, sportive, natural, connected part of the city, through a new design that is interconnected with the original ones. The architectural transformation of each hangar is linked to P. L. Nervi’s thoughts about the principles of architecture, as well as the other elements of the whole project meet the components of the place. The first mean of design has been the saline-grid taken as a form to re-weave the abandoned site with the city. The relation between the two hangars is highlighted by the introduction of a new building which becomes the horizon and at the same time a frame through the landscape. Other parts of the project have been developed through the key elements of the local, rural and historical architecture, to re-establish a space perceived and taken by the inhabitants’ collective memory as it is belonging to the city.