{"id":83967,"date":"2026-11-11T13:10:22","date_gmt":"2026-11-11T12:10:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.archea.it\/?p=83967"},"modified":"2026-11-11T13:14:02","modified_gmt":"2026-11-11T12:14:02","slug":"area-208-mediterraneo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.archea.it\/en\/area-208-mediterraneo\/","title":{"rendered":"area 208 | mediterraneo"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cMediterranean\u201d housing in the 20th century<\/strong><\/p>\n

Throughout the 20th century, European architectural culture drew from Mediterranean housing styles a fertile source of inspiration, which gradually acquired the outlines of a legend. The construction of the Mediterranean myth passes necessarily through the work of reducing to a unified concept a heterogeneous heritage of housing styles deriving from the orographic and climatic conditions of the geographical area involved, and from the distance in time and space of the social and cultural contexts that occupied and inhabited them, contaminating one another extensively. This multiform situation eventually narrowed itself down to a nucleus of timeless, stable principles with potentially universal value, the reflections of which are still alive in the contemporary culture . What is fascinating is the idea of a lifestyle and constructive culture linked to a rational use of available resources, an almost objective outcome of the climatic, orographic and technical conditions of the place, through the skilled labor and adaptability of an anonymous collectivity of individuals. The result is a conception of architecture that is both powerful and sufficiently vague as to be able to accept new architectural styles from time to time, giving new meaning to a series of spatial and figurative themes that appear foundational and inseparably bound to certain environmental features considered typical of the Mediterranean landscape.
\nThese themes can be more clearly traced in the designs of houses produced over the length of the past century by the European architectural culture, an elective field of experimentation where processes of research and the poetic trajectories of the authors give rise to particularly explicit forms of expression. In many projects, we can find recurrent approaches: an adaptive housing logic which takes account of the morphology of the land; the desire for an exclusive relationship with the landscape, conceiving of the home as a machine for observation.
\nThe articulation of the architectural system as a sequence of spatial units with varying degrees of specificity, which establish a relationship of compenetration and ambiguity between inside and outside, open and closed, personal and collective; the crucial role of threshold systems in the passage between different dimensions; attention to the modulation of the light through the articulation of the enclosures.<\/p>\n

Adaptive housing logic<\/strong><\/p>\n

The orographic conditions recurrent along the Mediterranean coasts, given by the presence of sloping terrain overlooking the sea, offer the opportunity to apply an adaptive housing logic.
\nMany projects are organized in more or less compact volumes spread among the different levels and, where the dimensions permit, through a fragmentation of volumes adapted to the slope of the land. This strategy of adaptation is achieved, in many cases, with the construction of substructures and platforms inspired by the agricultural practice of terracing applied in the Mediterranean countries, resulting in systems that enable the architecture to mitigate the irregularities of the terrain. Here, the accesses are organized and a series of external spaces designed as extensions of the domestic environments.
\nThe boundaries between building and nature, project and setting, become blurred, also considering the common use of local stone to produce the systems of transition and passage between outside and inside. This logic of adaptation and integration with the site seems to contrast with the modernist strategy of suspension of the building through the use of pilotis, or piers, that tend to separate the architecture completely from the ground.<\/p>\n

Machines for the observation of the landscape<\/strong><\/p>\n

Adaptive housing logic is the search for an absolute relationship with the landscape and a privileged condition of isolation in direct contact with nature. Under these conditions, the
\narchitecture of the home is seen as a machine for observation, with large openings and volumes designed strategically so that they face the sea or other significant elements of the setting, in contrast with the defensive closure of the other fronts. In some cases, the relationship with the landscape can be filtered by framing or geometrical patterns that select and divide the views. The architecture itself can go so far as to materialize an artificial horizon, forming an extraordinary device for the contemplation of the landscape.<\/p>\n

Thresholds and spatial sequences<\/strong><\/p>\n

The adaptive approach is also expressed in housing systems characterized by a sequence of spaces in which the passage between different dimensions and degrees is marked by threshold devices organized in a variety of ways. The house that is laid out in a series of rooms relative to the characteristics of the site challenges the modernist idea of radical spatial continuity, proposing instead a model open to different forms of integration and contamination: from the erosion of still- recognizable finished shapes to their disarticulation in systems that dissolve into the landscape and tend to include the natural elements.<\/p>\n

Light modulating devices<\/strong><\/p>\n

Articulating the threshold between outside and inside is also functional to modulating and attenuating the violence of the Mediterranean light. More or less sophisticated devices achieve this purpose: from roller blinds to shutters, from the apparent thickness of the walls to the presence of \u201coutdoor rooms\u201d, patios or porches that function as filters, with the aid of awnings and vegetation. The complexity of this dimension of frontier shaded environments with sudden, dramatic contrasts, is the opposite of the trend toward uniformity and abstraction of the light that we have in modern architecture, coherent with the idea of an isotropic space that is also radically fluid.
\nThe lines of research drawn by architectural culture on Mediterranean soil configure a laboratory of lifestyles that, for more than a century, has been fed by commonplaces and myths, often even with fertile contradictions. The search for an elite condition in contact with nature, and an exclusive relationship with the landscape is in direct conflict with the
\ndemocratization of the right to a vacation home or weekend getaway. The massive production of these, starting in the Sixties, resulted, in fact, in the upheaval of many precious natural sites along the coasts of Italy, Spain and Greece, with low density urbanization and an excessive consumption of the soil that have imperiled any possibility of privileged isolation.
\nThe coasts themselves continue to attract masses of tourists in search of an \u201cauthentic\u201d local experience, in addition to the masses of migrants in search of more comfortable places to live. These are phenomena capable of generating ferocious conflicts, but that in some cases have found in new vernacular expressions a response to the concept of \u201cliving differently\u201d: from the villages that invent a \u201cMediterranean style\u201d for tourists, to the spontaneous settlements where migrants find a basic form of acceptance and can adapt to the new environment. Once again, the imaginary Mediterranean is a world that can be adapted to different settings, satisfying the need to build fitting inclusions in places that derive
\nfrom its nature as an effective crossroad of routes reaching it from the widest variety of origins.
\nMediterranean housing cultures, with their adaptive and informal character, have succeeded in fostering processes of ecological transition, adaptation to climate change, cultural contamination and the growth of new collective rituals. An incessant action of modification, with people at the center, shapes the environment and adapts it to their needs, creating housing systems that are profoundly anchored to the changing meaning of life. The Mediterranean can, in this sense, still inspire us as a measure of resistance against standardization and technocracy, and as a meeting place for the world\u2019s many peoples and workshop for the future.<\/p>\n

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\u201cMediterranean\u201d housing in the 20th century Throughout the 20th century, European architectural culture drew from Mediterranean housing styles a fertile source of inspiration, which gradually acquired the outlines of a legend. The construction of the Mediterranean myth passes necessarily through the work of reducing to a unified concept a heterogeneous heritage of housing styles deriving […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":83974,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1798],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-83967","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-editorial"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.archea.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83967","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.archea.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.archea.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.archea.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.archea.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=83967"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.archea.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83967\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":83988,"href":"https:\/\/www.archea.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83967\/revisions\/83988"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.archea.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/83974"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.archea.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=83967"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.archea.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=83967"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.archea.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=83967"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}