PUNTA MELISO ENVIRONMENTAL RECOVERY
Santa Maria di Leuca, 2020
The restructuring project of the former Colonia Scarciglia dates back to 2004 and provided for the restructuring of the entire original volume in accordance with current legislation. Of that intervention remains a ruin, the imposing facade supported on one side by the floors of the first and second floor and on the other by a stone cage. Despite the work already carried out to secure the building, further work will certainly have to be planned in the near future. The project is supported by project financing. Instead of restoring the existing volume, the project plans to drastically reduce it by making the hill reappear, now completely hidden from view, an intervention where architecture dialogues, integrates, merges with the landscape: the main objective becomes the environmental recovery of Punta Meliso.
The choice to reduce the volume reduces not only the environmental impact but also the static pressure of the building on the ground. The reduction of the structural load and its uniform distribution result in a significant mitigation of the geomorphological hazard.
The imposing volume of the Colony is used only on the ground floor. The part of the main body overlooking the tourist residence is used to design a "Lido" which includes, in addition to specific functions such as swimming pools, fitness, spa and related services, also a restaurant and a bar designed to be accessible regardless of the operation of the Lido itself.
The remaining part of the former Cologne remains available to the public and is recovered as a Museum of the Sea, proposed as an active cultural project rather than a space of preservation of artifacts, a place that will make available everything that human intelligence has proposed in creative form on the theme of the sea and travel: documentaries, films, sound recordings, within a programme of activities that will develop in the spirit of the cultural indications proposed by the Apulia Region.
In the recovered landscape stands out a single element, a Tower of great symbolic value, whose height is the memory of the size of the former colony, volume that you choose to give up. The tower recalls an identifying sign of the coastal landscape of Salento, but it is also the gateway to the hill above, which must be made accessible not only on foot, but also by expanding, through a botanical restoration, the wooded part so as to form a forest that with its shade offers shelter from the scorching summer sun.
These routes are designed with appropriate gradients to eliminate any architectural barrier, and in their initial development give access to the terrace that develops above the museum and becomes an outdoor arena that can be used as a cinema and of course for other events.
CREDITS
City: S. Maria di Leuca
Client: Alboran Real Estate / Municipality of Castrignano del Capo
History: 01/2021
Gross area (mq): 3.510
Cost(€): 7.300.000
Architect: Toti Semerano
Project Team: Salvatore Musarò, Riccardo Catamo, Ludovica Fava, Stefano Sabato
Photography: Laboratory of Semerano Architecture
