The work, conducted in dialogue with the local community and its needs, has quickly become a new gathering point for residents, providing a piazza that restores the link with the natural environment.

The structure replicates the profiles of the peaks surrounding the town, located inside the National Park of Gran Sasso and Monti della Laga. Large triangular glass facades form the entrances, bringing in the vivid light of the mountain panorama, while permitting visual continuity between inside and outside, artificial and natural.

“The intense light of the Monti della Laga sets clear contours,” says Gianluca Fontana, “in the profiles of the mountains and in those of the buildings, formulating space and underscoring volumes. I wanted to pay homage to that light, making it the central focus of the project.”

The materials selected also embody this orientation. In particular, the external claddings have been developed by Gianluca Fontana in collaboration with the company Terreal Italia, as a custom solution; terracotta tiles that reference local materials, dominated by the brown earth tones of Monti della Laga, granting the surfaces of the structure a vibrant effect of shifting light and shadow.

The internal space, of 160 square meters, makes abundant use of wood, with a wall completely covered in this material that continues on the ceiling of the space.

The archetypal form of the triangle and the pyramid of the structure comes from the desire to return to the primordial shapes of construction. Fontana explains: “The triangle suggests a return to degree zero of architecture, that of the first rural settlements, which in a context of destruction caused by the earthquake cannot help to be seen as a statement of intent.”