Arquitectura popular en Cerdena y culturas del habitar: la casa

Carlo Atzeni

First

2021-01-01

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Abstract

“What is the Mediterranean?”. To this question, Braudel answered: “A thousand things. Not a landscape, but endless landscapes. Not a sea, but a continuous sequence of seas. Not a civilisation, but a series of stacked civilisations”. Sardinia is an island in the centre of the Mare Nostrum, where settlement cultures have shaped a long-term landscape which is rich in complexities and variations despite its limited size compared to the size of the basin, and is the expression of this plural multiplicity. In this island framework, the rural house became the expression of diversity and local identity, the outcome of a continuous and long-lasting variation process of the two reference archetypes during the recent pre-modernity: the courtyard house and the house consisting of elementary cells. These two archetypes correspond to the most primitive actions of land domestication: enclosing space to control it and to possess it, managing the land slopes with wall substructures, terracing and adding new spaces through superimposition and juxtaposition. Archaic elements such as the enclosure and the wall and the use of local materials, mostly stone and earth, contribute to the characterisation of a recurrent material dimension of the Sardinian building culture. This culture finds its original grounds in the “massivity” of the wall and it is still capable, if recovered appropriately, of responding to the needs of contemporary living, especially in light of the new challenges set by the pandemic crisis.