Genoese structure studio Caarpa has restored the Church of Nostra Signora della Costa in Levanto, Italy, putting in a mezzanine to enhance the unique ornamentation.
With a historical past predating its 14th-century consecration, the historic constructing was remodeled by Caarpa into a flexible area for conferences, seminars and occasions.
The constructing’s evolution had seen numerous house owners and expansions that drastically altered the inside by interventions corresponding to reducing the ground, promoting off marble cladding and including a plain concrete slab to divide the area.
By the mid-Twentieth century, the church had fallen into disrepair resulting from fast city growth and neglect.
Caarpa’s renovation of the Church of Nostra Signora della Costa launched a up to date metal construction often known as the cantoria, the Italian time period for a choir gallery, creating a personal mezzanine that overlooks the principle corridor.
Positioned close to the doorway of the church, its linear design contrasts the ornate frescoes and stucco decorations. The 2 curved “capitals” that help the construction are a refined nod to classical structure.
Crafted from micro-perforated steel panels, the cantoria’s staircase spirals as much as the mezzanine, permitting guests a close-up take a look at the preserved 18th-century particulars and the view from a huge trefoil window.
The construction was completed in a powder blue to match the church’s current partitions.
“We tried to steadiness the consumer’s request so as to add area with out compromising the lovely spatiality of the constructing,” Caarpa informed Dezeen.
“The concept was to create a ‘cantoria’ that may not solely enhance the usable floor space with a extra non-public area but additionally introduce recent views and views of the old constructing.”
Within the presbytery and apse, the studio restored the frescoes and stuccoes and cleaned them of patina, whereas intentionally exposing traces of the church’s Twentieth-century historical past.
The restored ornamentation enhances the uncooked pastel shades and lacking plaster on the partitions, which have been left apparent to spotlight the constructing’s more moderen struggles.
“On this a part of the constructing we needed to go away the story of the Twentieth-century occasions uncovered,” the studio defined.
“We consolidated the pastel shades, the coated traces and the lacking plasters as an off-the-cuff expression of current historical past. We needed to create a distinction between the 2 components of the church to explain its complete historical past.”
The stripped altars have been handled with lime putty to disclose their authentic kind whereas the flooring was changed with slate tiles organized linearly with borders each three rows.
Based in Genoa in 2017, Caarpa is an structure studio whose works discover the connection between structure and panorama in a historic context.
Different current initiatives involving renovations of historic church buildings embody the addition of contemporary interventions to a provostry in Prague and the conversion of a church in Transylvania right into a guesthouse.
