Masseria Maresca is a nineteenth century agricultural complex located on the initial part of the hillside of Murge overlooking towards Ostuni, in a natural complex of exceptional value.
Target of the restoration work was not only to recover and restore the historical complex but to provide it with those areas fundamental for it to become a farm-hotel.
The Rome based firm Schiattarella Associati to which the project has been assigned, consistently with its design philosophy, has developed a project that we could name “responsible recovering” based on respecting the historicity of pre-existence, the landscape continuity but clearly declaring contemporary add-ons as well.
The historical complex has been restored respecting and enhancing volumes, stone vaults, underlining the changes and the layering occurred along years, reassessing the value of treatment of the Ostuni lime and white stone surfaces. At the same time, in order to improve functional areas for its new accommodating purposes, an independent building has been positioned alongside the old cattle sheds, essential in its linear structure, harsh with its stone surfaces of which the organized plot can be distinguished.
The façade is made of a double skin of tuff blocks with a bioclimatic purpose in which vertical cuts freely open up generating deep dark shadows on it. On the same side a swimming pool has been realized and all the surrounding areas arranged. It’s the uniqueness of the “place” that has imposed the conditions within the project must range: natural configuration, historicity of the existing buildings, materials, surface treatments receiving and reverberating light, relation between solids and voids are the lexical basics of the project.
Profound respect for what has been found and awareness of the value of contemporary language.