Huge
craters dot the Italian landscapes like open wounds on the
territory. From North to South the abandoned quarries in Italy are
16.045, most of them former marble quarries. This is the
photograph taken by Legambiente in the 2014 quarries report.
Although the crisis in the construction sector has actually
contributed to reducing the amount of stone materials
extracted, the numbers are still impressive: one billion euros
in revenues, 80 million cubic meters of sand and gravel, 31.6
million cubic meters of limestone 8.6 million of cubic meters
of ornamental stones extracted in 2012. The
breathtaking landscapes of marble quarries, shaped by the
human hand, has an incredible evocative power. Its still
echoes from its industrialized past, where man has dug
ceaselessly to extract a noble material, shaping a landscape
for eternity, leaving its ineffaceable trace in the territory.
Extraction sustains our society, and even in recent decades we
have been advancing technologically, we have not progressed
enough that slowing down the pace would be possible. We rarely
stop to think about the origin of the materials which makes up
the built environment, or the raw materials necessary to the
endless demands of contemporary human activity. And so, as the
world population has become increasingly more and more urban,
the landscapes that provide these raw materials become more
remote and spatially distant from the daily view, and since
literally these landscapes disappear, we may think of them as
lost landscapes. Exactly here, within these frightening
numbers but yet also this enormous architectural potential,
our project MARMOR
III comes into play. This project
intends to give several possible strategic but also
provocative answers to the following questions: What to do
with these abandoned sites?
How
can our actions contribute to the natural?
How
can the natural contribute to our way of life?
The real architectural provocation
here is to actually 'live in marble', with this simple
evocative slogan and through the images provided the viewers
mind is immediately transported into a modern interpretation
of a penthouse in the midst of a marble quarry with
spectacular views, minimalist residential units immersed in
marble, a thermal bath entirely excavated in a quarry. That is
also when the viewer realizes that this project is also
realistic, we can imagine to actually live in one of those
spaces, surrounded by marble in an archaic yet hyper modern
and minimalist environment. Water as added element nourishes a
new ecosystem that extends outward. While inhabiting the
spaces deep within the mountain the visitor gets the true
sense of the land altering process of marble mining while
being able to take in the breath taking experience of
inhabiting these spaces once only seen by the eyes of the men
and woman who excavated the stone. The scale shift from the
large pit flooded by a waterfall, to a small intimate space
utilized for reflection on oneself, is effective in making one
feel the true connection to nature and other beings. It is a
true escape from our busy lives to become one with the natural
environment. We, as humans, have the opportunity to benefit
the environment and all living things. It is our relationships
with the environment and other species that make us part of an
ecosystem.
In
proposing the intervention in different marble quarries, in
addition to readjust the space for a new use, it is aimed to
strengthen the relationship with the genius loci, highlighting
an atmosphere that encourages the visitor to reflect on the
impacts caused by the extraction of materials, represented in
this case, the contrast between human scale and the
monumentality of the site. At the same time the visitor or
inhabitant will have as well a very intimate relationship with
the marble as material but also with marble in its purest
architectural form. Marmor
III proposes a strategic reuse of these abandoned marmor
quarries. These different site specific architectural
interventions would reconfigure the former volumes excavated
for marble extraction and excavating new ones to better adapt
the different project typologies. Meanders of sculptural
porosity and unique architectural compositions are created by
occupying and modifying the voids of
each quarry. The different project proposals generate
different spaces through the process of addition and
subtraction, establishing a dialogue between raw material and
human production. The building
approach is somewhere between architecture and nature, it is
an expression of diversified architectures that live between
raw and glossy, modular and sculptural, opaque and
transparent, solid and void.
Crazy as it may sound, since first
published on my personal instagram i have already received
several requests for actually acquiring one of the apartments,
a hotel chain contacted me to make a feasibility study, a
marble quarry in South Tyrol is interested in a collaboration
of sorts, so it is evident there is a real architectural and a
more importantly, a commercial potential in this project. From
an architectural provocation to an architectural intervention,
it is ecological and sustainable.
