The renovation project of the former Colonia Scarciglia dates back to 2004, which involved the renovation of the entire original volume in compliance with current legislation. A ruin remains of that intervention, the imposing facade supported on one side by the attics of the first and second floors and on the other by a stone cage.
Rethinking The Future Awards 2024
First Award | Public Landscape (Concept)
Project Name: Redevolmpent of Punta Meliso Coast, Santa Maria Di Leuca
Category: Public Landscape (Concept)
Studio Name: Laboratorio di Architettura Semerano
Design Team: Salvatore Musarò, Stefano Sabato, Riccardo Catamo, Ludovica Fava
Area: 16500 mq
Year: 02/2021
Location:
Consultants:
Photography Credits: Courtesy of Laboratorio di Architettura Semerano
Render Credits: Courtesy of Laboratorio di Architettura Semerano
Other Credits:
Despite the safety interventions on the building already carried out, further interventions will certainly have to be planned in the short term. 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 the architecture dialogues, integrates, merges with the landscape: the main objective becomes the environmental recovery of Punta Meliso.
Strengthening interventions on the rocky ridge through specific works in concrete and with new Mediterranean essences allow the accessibility and use of Punta Meliso by creating a green promenade which ends in the restoration of the old lido into a new equipped public one accessible to all with swimming pools natural waters.
The choice to reduce the volume of the Colony reduces not only the environmental impact but also the static pressure of the building on the ground. Of the imposing volume of the Colony, only the ground floor is used. The part of the main body facing the tourist residence is intended 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 usable regardless of the operating environment of the Lido itself.
The remaining part of the former Colony remains accessible to the public and is being recovered as a Sea Museum, proposed as an active cultural project rather than as a space for conserving finds, a place that will make available everything that is human intelligence has proposed in a creative form on the theme of the sea and travel: documentaries, films, sound recordings, within a program of activities that will develop in the spirit of the cultural indications proposed by the Puglia Region. In the recovered landscape, a single element stands out, a tower with great symbolic value, whose height is a reminder of the size of the former colony, a volume which we choose to give up. The tower recalls an identifying sign of the Salento coastal landscape, but it is also the gateway to the hill above, which we want to make usable not only as a walk, but also by expanding, through a botanical restoration, the tree-lined part so as to form a forest which with its shade offers shelter from the scorching summer sun.
These paths are designed with adequate slopes to eliminate any architectural barrier, and in their initial development they give access to the terrace which develops above the museum and becomes an outdoor arena that can be used as a cinema and obviously for other events.
