Nostra Signora della Costa Cultural and Experiential Training Center
Nostra Signora della Costa Cultural and Experiential Training Center
caarpa
STRUCTURAL DESIGN
Exa Engineering
BUILDING COMPANY
Co.gi.ta Scrl
DESIGN TEAM
Caarpa
LOCATION
Italy
CATEGORY
Cultural Architecture, Refurbishment
Text description provided by architect.
HISTORY
The history of the church of Nostra Signora della Costa in Levanto is uncertain; a nineteenth-century epigraph reports a consecration in 1334, but probably the building is more ancient.
For the next two centuries the church was owned by the Community of the Borgo di Levanto until 8 January 1528 when it was sold to the noble Genoese family of Da Passano.
The works to expand the presbytery date back to the eighteenth century, as well as the frescoes and stucco decorations.
In 1872 the episcopal inspection states: «slate floor with marble squares and all the walls are frescoed: halfway up the wall are painted the Assumption of Mary and the Nativity.
In the walls of the presbytery, the Annunciation and the visit to St. Elizabeth, and it's all excellent". After the Second World War, the building was sold to the Curia and then to a religious congregation and the building started its decline.
The ancient church was compromised. The original floor has been lowered by about 50 cm and the hall split horizontally with a flat slab.
The altars, balustrades, and valuable materials were sold, the church was deprived of its treasures.
For years the situation remained like this; for a period it was even used as a school. In the 2000s, the slab was demolished and a new flat roof in laminated wood was built.
IDEA
In 2018, it was purchased by the company PF Economy to create a cultural and experiential training center for conventions, conferences, seminars, and events.
The client's idea is to increase the usable surface area with a more private space.
The architectural design was carried out by caarpa, an architecture and landscape studio based in Genoa.
The structural design was by EXA engineering. The idea of the project consists in the creation of a contemporary steel "cantoria" ( a kind of choir, typical of the Italian church).
DESIGN
The "cantoria" is a small architecture placed inside the hall. Its terse and linear design remodels the space of the entrance of the church.
The only decorative concession is represented by two curved "capitals" that interrupt the linear structure and recall the elegance of the classical architecture.
It is a mediating element, it suggests new spatiality and attempts connections with the ancient building.
The new exposed steel structure is a spatial machine that adds new glimpses and views, modifying the perception of space.
The staircase leading to the mezzanine floor wraps around the structure, offering a close-up view of the eighteenth-century stuccoes.
In front of the counter façade, inside two small rooms, there is space for the technical systems.
The restoration of the frescoes of the presbytery acts as a counterpoint to the walls of the hall.
In this part of the building we wanted to leave the story of twentieth-century events exposed, just consolidating the pastel shades, the covered traces and the missing plasters as an informal expression of recent history.
Although less "noble" than the ancient events, it now acquires an aesthetic value as well as a value of memory.
The side altars, now stripped of their coverings, were covered with a layer of lime putty that allows us to glimpse their original shape, by now softened over the years.
The stucco, cleaned of the patina of the centuries, brought to light traces of the original colors.
The floor was made with slate tiles laid in a row and bordered every three. On the mezzanine floor, an open space overlooks the hall below.
From the large trefoil window you can look at the village of Levanto up to the sea.
