Bicycle Shelter | Fpv

In 2016, the municipality of Carbonia asked us for technical and architectural consulting on the recovery of an old building in the Serbariu Great Mine: the goal was the transformation of an abandoned building into an artisan workshops. The Serbariu mine was one of the most important plants in Sardinia, inaugurated in the thirties of the twentieth century, remained active until the seventies. The project for the new artisan workshops are built on the grounds of the bicycle storage building, dating back to the 1930s, whose structures are partly maintained and upgraded. The building has an important position in the plant: it marks the entrance being symmetrical to the direction, a fine original rationalist building. The new laboratories introduce a new function in the mine and relaunch the link of an historically important area with the current life of the city. For the success of this new task it was important to outline a figure that could restore recognition and decorum at the entrance of the mine and that, maintaining the memory of the pre-existing building, and being expressive of the new uses and the renewal of the whole area. It was decided to maintain the original walls which defined the perimeter in the state of a palimpsest, with traces of subsequent modifications and of the action of time. Within this enclosure have been built new volumes suitable for the new uses: these volumes take up the original distribution reinterpreting and adapting it. The main volume is the large parallelepiped housing the showroom, made entirely of black concrete: this volume is, by its colour, evocative of the history of the mine and it is also capable of assuming the role of a contemporary visual reference for the entrance of the plant. Through the use of color variations and reflective surfaces, perceptive shifts were introduced with the intention of enriching the experience of visiting and working in the new spaces: the experiences of artists such as Ettore Spalletti, Robert Smithson and Dan Graham were for us a strong suggestion.