VOIDS. Digging the dark side

In the silence that surrounds the Temple of Madonna delle Cataste, there are two masonry walls which, in their essentiality, take on the role of perceptual devices, moving the look towards the generative fulcrum of the project: the temple. The shadows create an otherworldly reality, a latent dynamic that breaks the monotony of space. These elements are essential parts that lead to the underground world created by the excavation. This act turns the full into an architectural absence, that is structured thanks to the presence of the light. Three portions taken from the land define the project intervention. The first one, the access ramp, is a wound on the soil that prolongs the natural slope and leads to a declining path which invites you to slow down in silence, to feel as you are in another time. This path leads to the invisible core of the project: an hypogeum circular room, placed right under the temple, where a big oculo lets the zenith light filter through, creating a silent connection between the sky, the temple and the underground. The light, falling down, softly rests on a pool of water and generates an atmosphere made of suspension, listening and waiting. From this gravity centre, you eventually enter the theatre, an essential space, designed by pure lines and excavation geometries. The bleachers and the stage come out like scars produced by the anthropic act of digging. Here the architecture becomes silence and allows sound, light and people to build the theatrical space. The project is a tribute to the land, to light and quietness. A theatre that is not only a place of entertainment, but a contemplative experience. A passage between two worlds: surface and depth, presence and absence, visible and invisible.