Selucent it is much more than a hospitality project, it is a whole Alpine village being reborn, honoring our past with an eye towards the future. The creators and promoters of the initiative are Fabio and Lara, architects of Workshop82who have already taken the abandoned hamlet of Alpisellalocated on Ligurian Alps, in the municipality of Garessioat 1,000 meters above sea level, starting an experimental and sustainable recovery, which is financed through the accommodation facility, a sort of widespread hotelhoused in what were once the granary, the oven and the church.
Selucent LOFT
Selucent StarsBOX
“The intent is to use planning not as an end but as a tool for the refunctionalization and valorization of rural areas”, explain the architects, who did not limit themselves to recovering the thirteen pre-existing, poor and functional buildings, but also added new elements, contemporary wooden modules, clearly distinguishable, yet in perfect harmony with their surroundings. The first is StarsBOX, a minimal architecture whose peculiarity is having an opening roof, so you can look at the stars while lying on the double mattress inside. It is a temporary installation, which can be assembled and dismantled extremely easily, so as not to affect the landscape, a winning idea that has already spread to other Italian regions, Croatia, Germany, and even Japan.
Selucent GlamBOX
Selucent GlamBOX
Instead, it is inspired by the barns and shacks typical of the area GlamBOXa chestnut wood module of 5×3 meters which is divided into two levels. Its Corten steel sheet roofing is a modern reinterpretation of the old Piedmontese red terracotta tile roofs, whose color it recalls. Even the chestnut boards are balanced between tradition and experimentation: they have the dark shade of the ancient shacks, but obtained thanks to the Japanese technique known as Shou sugi ban, which involves a fire treatment to protect the surfaces from the elements. Other innovative details are the windows and the double transparent span on the roof, while everything else – from the shapes to the materials – pays homage to the vernacular styles.
Selucent LOFT
Among the old buildings recovered it deserves a special mention LOFTwhat was once the barn, a stone volume with a wooden and sheet metal roof which before the restoration was in disastrous conditions. The creative team consolidated the structure, replaced the roof and inserted a new internal mezzanine, so as to keep the living and sleeping areas separate. For the external covering, the focus is still on corrugated sheets of Corten steel, which coexist with the old, partially detached lime plaster.
Selucent StarsBOX
Preserve what exists as much as possibleand is moreover the basis of the project, which re-proposes or reuses poor and low-cost local materials such as stone, chestnut wood, lime, cooked and raw earth, but, as we have seen, it also allows itself unexpected solutions, to intercept the needs of the our times. Precisely by virtue of this convergence between past and present, Selucente also acts as an open-air architectural and landscape design laboratory, where guests of the Albergo Diffuso can see the works live. A way to encourage a culture of recovery, instilling a new sensitivity and awareness, which our ancient villages need to hope not to be forgotten.
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Elisa Zagaria is an author who has transformed her greatest passion into a job: researching and inventing stories. What she talks about for Elle Decor, as a freelance collaborator, features dream homes, personalities, events and symbolic places of our time. And then there are other stories, in the form of novels and especially screenplays, that she writes for television, waiting to become rich enough to be able to buy one of those dream houses.
