Memorial Museum Capo d'Orso

The La Maddalena Archipelago National Park in Sardinia was once an important military defence structure in the Mediterranean (Napoleon - WW2). Today only decaying ruins remind us of that past. My project deals with human perception in a historically significant place and formulates a dialectic of history and landscape that reopens forgotten spaces

The relation to the place and its meaning become the central theme. To create an understanding of the situation, first landscape conditions, historical events and existing buildings are overlaid. The examination of a utility value is followed by the formulation of an architectural attitude. The uniqueness of the landscape and the insertion of military architecture should be emphasized so that visitors are able to experience a physical contact with the historical heritage. By establishing rules derived from the site, interventions are formulated that are narrated in sequences. A dialogue is created between the existing and the emerging, between memory and vision. This is made possible by the addition of a new museum, which relieves the existing ruins and takes up the necessary program to inform about the context. The ruins emancipate themselves to exhibition objects in the landscape and transport atmosphere. They are a symbol of forgetting and create spaces in which memory takes on a physical dimension. The sensitive approach of making existing structures visible with the leitmotif: "as little as possible as much as necessary" leads to a gentle conservation that allows existing buildings to continue to live on as ruins within a perceivable framework. Based on old traces, paths of varying width lead through the area and ensure a differentiated intimacy. As a reinterpretation of the fortress typology, the museum confidently integrates into the existing ensemble and creates orientation and new order. This includes the potential for multiple uses and the possibility of writing new history as an extension of the overall impression of the site. All interventions fit into the image of the site and change it at the same time. Landscape conditions, such as topography and vegetation, spatial sequences and arrangements of light and shadow, colour and materiality, as well as the artificial layering of the granite serve as a direct reference. This tension, which also conveys dignity, self-evidence and a certain maturity, is what this design is about.