Scattered Hotel in Masullas
Casa del Vescovo and Casa Palomba form the nucleus of a scattered hotel commissioned by the municipal administration of Masullas, in the historic centre of the small town in the Marmilla region, in the province of Oristano.
These are two traditional houses of a more urban architectural tenor than the typical Campidanese house which instead forms the bulk of the building fabric of the historic centre. In each of the two buildings, it is possible to read the matrix of the original courtyard house to which modifications have been made over the centuries.
Casa del Vescovo (Bishop's House)
The project of the Bishop's House is based on a simple choice: to intervene with architectural solutions compatible with the original ones derived from the survey to restore the degraded parts and to make those changes necessary for the new function. Although some important changes are indispensable - think of the systems, accessibility for the disabled, or the functional needs of a widespread hotel - the intervention will have its success while respecting the identity of the House.
The project involves some reintegration of the volumes in a state of ruin: these works will be of the type of maintenance or reconstruction as faithful as possible compared to what is documented by the historical photos of the time.
The project also includes some steel and glass works not envisaged by the PPCS, but which, due to their lightness and transparency, are believed to be able to happily dialogue with the stone architecture of the Bishop's House.
Casa Palomba/Palazzo Sepulveda
The Casa Palomba restoration and reuse project propose three different approaches to the theme. The conservation conditions of the asset are taken into consideration, as well as the amount of information relating to the asset before it degraded regardless of whether this happened “for too much or for little force” in human maintenance.
Starting from the enclosure wall on Piazza S. Leonardo, the cadastral shows us a volume attested on the front of which, however, we have no other confirmation.
It is likely that there was a portal, but it is a hypothesis. In the absence of direct feedback from a historical portal, a possible current interpretation of the portal theme is proposed. The full-height stone wall is rebuilt as it certainly was before the 1950s, but the modern portal is arched with the interlocking of three large ashlars in the local limestone.
The three monoliths, assembled with a prestress, want to propose a minimalist and at the same time contextualized version (in terms of shape and material) of the theme. The stone has a vertical line and an inscription on the top with the year of construction.
The main body is undoubtedly the most legible architecturally in its original characters. For this building, the restoration is of a maintenance type, in the sense that everything that can be repaired is preserved and repaired and replaced with pieces that conform to the original or suitable.
A more in-depth discussion must be made with respect to the regulatory aspects, for which the windows, even if typologically consistent, must comply with the current legislation on energy saving.
The attic and the roof, although visible will appear traditional solutions, within them will have those layers that give insulation, which allow the passage of the systems, etc.
