Landscape redevelopment of the Bari Sardo coastline
The Bari Sardo coastal road belongs to that geography of ordinary places which, precisely because they are part of everyday life, often escape the gaze of architecture. A coastal road, an edge between pinewood and sea, a small yet intensely used infrastructure, where traffic, parking, beach access and seasonal pressure had progressively produced a condition of discontinuity. Not an abandoned place, therefore, but a place worn down by use; not an empty space to be filled, but a margin to be understood.
The commission began with an apparently defined scope: to develop into an executive design a final project that had already been funded. Tight deadlines, measured resources, decisions partly already made. Yet the issue raised by the Municipality was not merely technical. That road was described as a collective expectation, almost a civic desire: to return to the community a stretch of coastline capable of bringing together safety, accessibility and landscape.
This called for the final design not to be treated simply as a given to be developed, but as material to be critically tested. The executive design became a process of rereading the existing condition: a work of subtraction, correction and measure, rather than addition. Some previous choices were revised; others were reversed. The aim was not to reinforce the infrastructural character of the road, but to reduce its weight, allowing the landscape to re-enter the public space.
The road section was reorganised through one-way traffic and a 30 km/h speed limit. The reduction in vehicular pressure made it possible to order the flows, separate pedestrian routes from carriageways, and free the edge of the pinewood. Parking areas, previously scattered and often invasive along the green frontage, were moved uphill and reduced. The coastal widenings ceased to be residual spaces for cars and became places for stopping, crossing and relating to the sea.
The decisive gesture was the removal of the wooden barriers that separated the road from the pinewood. Their disappearance did not create a void, but a new continuity. The existing vegetation once again defines the edge, no longer as a detached backdrop, but as a living material of the project. Cistus, lentisk, prickly pears and Mediterranean scrub were preserved and integrated with targeted low-water-demand planting, capable of generating, in specific points, small dry Mediterranean gardens. The project does not introduce another landscape: it works with what the place already contains.
The artificial elements also seek a condition of belonging. The lighting fixtures, designed as branches, do not impose themselves as autonomous objects, but accompany the route with controlled light, enhancing the greenery, resting areas and access points to the sea. Granite rocks play a dual role: informal seating and deterrent devices. They prevent cars from entering the pinewood without rebuilding a barrier, replacing the technical boundary with a mineral presence that is recognisable and coherent with the context.
The economic data also tells the nature of the intervention. The overall project budget amounts to €1,956,000, of which €1,359,156.80 are for works, €18,036.24 for safety costs and €95,931.29 for the lighting supply. Related to approximately 13,920 m² of surfaces redesigned overall, including permeable paving, green areas and redeveloped margins, the intervention has an incidence of approximately €140/m² on the general budget, considering works, safety and lighting supply.
These figures must be read within the real complexity of the work. This was not simply a repaving project, but a deep reconstruction of public ground. A significant share of the resources was absorbed by works that are scarcely visible yet decisive: sewerage improvements, water network works, cable ducts, provisions for burying utility lines, electrical systems, public lighting, excavations, backfilling and underground services. Almost one third of the intervention is hidden below the finished level of the new road landscape, yet it is precisely this part that ensures its durability, order and functioning.
The design choices were strong, but always supported by continuous technical and economic control. Price analyses, verification of works, dialogue with the contractor and control of execution were essential tools for holding together architectural quality, technical performance, budget sustainability and landscape coherence. The result does not arise from an isolated gesture, but from precise work carried out within a complex construction site.
The transformation concerns not only the built outcome, but also the process that made it possible. The construction site had to measure itself against the seasonal life of the coastline: for two summers, works were stopped from June to early October, leaving space for the tourist season, beach access and existing activities. The work was built in phases, within a fragile balance between the urgency of transformation and continuity of use.
At a time when architecture is often consumed through the final image, this intervention claims the value of the process: the dialogue with the Municipality, the verification of constraints, budget control, site management, and the ability to modify decisions already taken when the place requires it. A small public work is never only what is seen at the end. It is also the set of negotiations, renunciations and precisions that make that transformation possible.
A work of this nature is never the result of a single author. Projects are built by teams, and when merit exists, it must be shared among all the actors involved: a public client capable of supporting non-obvious choices; a Mayor, a RUP and technical offices with foresight; a contractor who, despite the operational and seasonal difficulties of the site, never gave up and remained committed to the end; and a design and works supervision team called upon to hold together design, technique, time, cost and landscape.
The Bari Sardo coastal road is a small public infrastructure, but it addresses a broader question: how a road can stop occupying the landscape and begin to belong to it. Not a decorated road, therefore, but a road made slower, more permeable and more available to the life of the place. The first piece of a wider coastal strategy, in which safety becomes an opportunity for restitution.
CREDITS
RUP / Project Manager: Geom. Francesco Pala
Technical Office: Arch. Loredana Demurtas
Contractor: Perino Appalti s.r.l., Alessio Perino
Site Assistant: Eng. Marco Nieddu
Design and Works Supervision: Studio Inhori — Arch. Eng. Davide Fancello, Eng. Francesco Columbu, Arch. Agnese Mavuli, Arch. Marco Fois
Archaeologist: Anna Falconi
Geologist: Pierluigi Fadda
Assistant to the Works Supervision: Geom. Andrea Pilloni
