Ostuni 2012
This project, commissioned by the Municipality of Ostuni, involves the reuse and design of a part of the Capuchin friars’ convent, which over the centuries has served as a prison, a fire brigade barracks, and eventually reduced to a mere storage facility. The project envisions the urban reorganization of a sedimented fabric that, despite its urban location, has become marginal.
The House of Music, therefore, opens up to the city, no longer a prison or a barracks characterized by high walls that made the space impenetrable, but rather a perimeter and backdrop for a small square, an agora, a place of exchange for youth culture. The project aims to reclaim and redefine the existing spaces, prioritizing them, not with dramatic gestures, but without timid attitudes. The versatile space for exhibitions and concerts opens towards the square, preserving the pattern of the pavements, and the open space allows glimpses and interaction with the vibrancy of the exhibitions. In the narrow and long library covered by a barrel vault, the arched openings that were blocked or modified over the years, depending on its uses, have been reopened. Thus, it reasserts the irregularity of an architecture not designed but self-built, an architecture on the fringes that deserves utmost consideration.
In 2014, this project won the In/Arch-Ance Award for the best architectural work in Puglia in the category of “Building and/or Urban Redevelopment Intervention,” as reported on the Archilovers.com portal.
