Luxury Casa Albanese, Italy

Italian architects ASA Studio Albanese have designed the Casa Albanese project. Completed in 1998, this traditional Mediterranean dammuso house can be found on the Island of Pantelleria, Italy.

According to the architects: “A pouring of lava, on the continental shelf of Africa, in the middle of the Sicilian Channel. Thirty miles from Tunisia. An agricultural complex containing a number of dammusi, the typical construction of the local agricultural population, built with double dry-masonry walls in lavic stone and obsidian, interspaces filled with rubble ‘casciata’: the internal wall supports the vault, the external wall functions as a buttress; a rugged landscape, with severe level variations, each marked by e wall; Mediterranean vegetation (grapevines, olives, holm oaks and prickly pear cacti).

“On the pre-existing dammusi, which were partially ruined, a series of new spaces have been built using the original construction techniques, concatenated around a volume with an apse, with a vaulted roof (height 4.5 m), organised around a sequence of enclosed courtyards that can be used in the summer. The compact character of this allusive village is contrasted by the openness, defined by a simple stucco wall, of the swimming pool, whose border marks the profile of the sea.

“A succession of material identifies the interior: bare stone indicates pre-existing elements. A long pathway in tufa, bordered by a stone wall, leads to a depression of 16 metres below the level of the contemporary Italian house. At the centre of this volcanic depression, terraces have been built to create an open-air theatre.”

Images courtesy of ASA Studio Albanese.

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