The Necessary Architecture

An implementation methodology is applied in situations where hydrogeological risk and renovation requirements co¬exist as parallel emergencies. Three projects are laid along a mountain road, solving safety concerns and simultaneously building architectures for long term prospects and other needs of the area.

The first project is part of the SS36 state road nearby the Gallivaggio Sanctuary, dating back to the 15th century, today in a state of complete devastation after repeated landslides. The urgency to protect the fundamental stretch of road through an artificial gallery, becomes an opportunity to create new spaces for contemporary travellers and reinterpret the third landscape between nature and ruins, crossed by infrastructure. The monolithic roofed architecture is divided in to three main bodies (a market, a parking lot with a climbing wall and observation point, a restaurant) connected together by means of stairs, ramps and tunnels.\nThe second project is set on a huge expanse of rocks, threatening traffic and two villages. A wall is made at the most looming and sublime point. After a broken direction, the path continues through a narrow covered passage, and then reopens in a trapezoidal room, oriented towards the ruins of Gallivaggio. Wide nets with intertwined rings hang embedded into the inclined reinforced concrete wall. A continuous seat marks the lower side of the wall and the flooring is thrown irregularly around the huge boulders. The project hybridizes two solutions for the containment of danger and tries to dare a poetics through an architecture that aspires to the Sacred.\nThe third project develops along a curve, after the village of Cimaganda, which owes its name to the paleo-landslide that characterizes the surrounding wild landscape. The new mass fall cut off all communication with the valley and subsequently arranged with an embankment. The new retaining concrete walls host a small cycle-workshop do-it-yourself and a fountain, which acts as an entrance door and link to the path to Avero.