Costa Concordia Lighthouse
For centuries, lighthouse have delivered light messages to navigators, with its own code and rules, the memorial seeks to create its own language, to express a symbolic message of what was witnessed by the Giglio Island.
Nowadays, only few light houses remain. Once crucial for navigation, those Entities have now become more and more useless. As sailors now use satellite positioning, navigation tools are now more in space than on earth, where they begin to disappear.
In order to reflect the new status of light houses, the memorial takes the shape of a perfect circle, visible from the sky, marking the position of the disaster, but hidden from the ground.
the ring is positioned at the interface between land and water. The excavation of a path in the ground and the construction of a platform at the water level, is the result of a symbolical exchange and creates a spiritual journey between land and sea, between the infinity of water and the massiveness of earth.
After excavation, the raw material is reused for the construction of the foundations of the concrete ring. The triangular section structure is firmly anchored in the coast, cantilevered in the sea. Throughout its position, and its relation to the sea, the memorial also seeks to express the instability of the elements, and its vulnerability to climate.
Like the ocean lighthouses, rough seas make the memorial inaccessible. During this period of time, the tip is isolated from the ground, surrounded by water.
The lighthouse expresses itself metaphorically through several symbols.
The ascensional character settled in lighthouses typology Is expressed through the vertical circulation giving access to the ring. This place lighthouse staircase is dug into the wall.
The negative space created by the break also shelters projectors illuminating the retaining wall. The reflection of that intense light against the clear concrete directs a light beam towards the sky. From the sea, a vertical light strip and its reflection in the sea, join in an irregular slot, a kind of scar, a reminder of a painful past.
For centuries, lighthouse have delivered light messages to navigators, with its own code and rules (known by heart by the sailors), the memorial seeks to create its own language, to express a symbolic message of what was witnessed by the Giglio Island.
