The Forgotten Countryside, a contemporary opportunity

A pilot project for the family farm that attempts to establish a strong mediation between the natural landscape and the narrow urban reality, through the demolition and reconversion of agricultural artefacts, and the design of a natural infrastructure capable of ordering and re-defining a new rural scenario that can be replicable on a territory scale.

The aim is to combine a new synergy between agricultural production and hospitality in the rural sphere, which, by exploring a multifunctionality linked to the productive aspects, may represent an integrated response to face the challenges posed by contemporaneity. Architecture therefore represents a valid instrument of synthesis to read and interpret the complexity that characterizes this place, subject to continuous transformations. The project attempts, to trace a new course for the farm, thus bringing back an order of measurement and proportions that could trigger potential dynamics within the rural complex, establishing a strong mediating relationship between the natural landscape and the urban reality.\r\nWith this project we have therefore tried to reason and act by both surgical demolition and rehabilitation of the existing, whenever possible, while enhancing those aspects that are already present, just waiting to play a more suitable role.\r\nIn order to convey this idea of cohesion between the parts, it was decided to tell this process, through the formulation of a sequence of 6 themes: treatment of natural circumstances, such as topography and water, to then introduce architectural themes as the voids, the boundaries and the paths, and the multifunctional valorization of the farm and its integration with the public sphere, exploring the iconic and potential of the artefacts originally intended only for production: the greenhouses. The elements that immediately aroused strong interest were the underground tanks present under the plant counters. We started from memory : expressing the water and exploit the slope of the terrain to highlight it and thus use its strength as the first design action. A functional core of the system to which everything else would be connected. Without water the whole agricultural complex could not survive, so it was decided to save it, trying to exploit all useful surfaces for supply and distribution throughout the property; reducing waste to a minimum and regulating the whole ecosystem until the valley’s torrent, connecting in the natural cycle.