A SIXTEENTH CENTURY NATURAL SPRING BROUGHT TO LIFE ONCE AGAIN | 32mq Design Studio

The natural Spring is situated in the town centre of Santa Lucia di Serino, a small town just outside Avellino, 40 km from Naples, Italy. The town is a destination for tourists, walkers and cyclists who stop here to drink the cool spring water in particular during the summer time. The Spring is a small structure that encloses a space of about 90 sqm and is a Listed Building as per the "Code of Cultural Heritage and Landscape". We found this Spring in bad condition and it required a refurbishment project in order to prevent further and irreversible degradation.

 The presence of the water has always been a fundamental and distinctive element of the identity of this area, here in fact, the Roman aqueduct of Serino (also called Augustan Aqueduct) was built to solve the problem of water supply to Naples. In the sixtheenth century, the Spring was used to irrigate the valley thanks to the ingenious design of a network of tunnels and underground ducts by the De Filippi family. In the eighteenth century, the Spring was turned into a public laundry and it became a vital daily meeting place for the residents as the men took the water for everyday use and the women used it for washing clothes.

 The project aims to rebuild the sense of identity, to develop the community spirit and to promote the culture of participation by giving back to the community one of the main gathering places of the town, an element strongly associated with the memory of the place and the history of the small community.  In a modern concept of the relationship between the old and the new, the project is enhanced by a juxtaposition of the forms, stratigraphy, and materials of the past and the new features of the project necessary to bring to life the Spring once again.

 The interventions done to the Spring are about the upgrading of the external facades through cleaning the stone cladding, the risarcitura of the damaged concrete shelf that surrounds the top of the facades and the reorganization of the small piazza facing the spring.

 From this space, through a new door, you arrive into a small hallway leading to the internal washhouse space covered by a pergola. Here the paving was removed to bring to life the old original stone flooring called Breccia Irpinia, which appears in excellent condition and the internal walls were cladded with corten panels and perforated corten panels on which climbing plants will grow and continue on steel cables to form the pergola giving shade in the hot summer months. The plants are of different types so that differing colours and flowers are visible at different periods of the year. The choice of the corten was due to the humidity of the Spring. The corten steel has in fact a protective quality from corrosion thanks to a compact patina constituted from oxidation of its compounds. This patina will differ in tonality as time goes by, giving it a brownish discoloration.

 This Spring, closed for many years, has now been returned to the community.

CREDITS

Date: 2015

Gross floor area: 93 m2

Cost Construction: € 48.199,98

Client: Comune di Santa Lucia di Serino, (AV)

Architectural design: 32mq design studio

Collaborators: Daniela D’argenio - Landscape Architect

                           Daniela De Marco – Structural Engineer

                           Daniela Pellecchia – Architectural Assistant

General Contractor: G&G Construction

Photography: Simone Florena, Marco Abete , Antonio Maria Masucci