MATER NATURAE, CAGLIARI

Cagliari is a city that was born, grew, and developed in harmony and symbiosis with the natural elements that surround it and belong to it. It is part of a rich network of ecosystems that interact, communicate, and complete the built environment. The city opens like a window between the sea and the countryside, in a miraculous alternation of land and water that generates views and landscapes in colors that are sometimes almost surreal.

The city is nestled in a sequence of white limestone hills, lush pines, and clear bodies of water. Its streets wind through wetlands, green hills, colorful salt flats, and white sandy beaches.

This strong landscape identity influences and inspires the entire project, demanding an increasingly close dialogue between architecture and nature. Hence, the need for an architecture that cannot remain self-contained, but one capable of integrating with its surroundings—shaped by the dominant force of the wind in a play of curves and right angles, plastic and rigid forms, all in pursuit of compositional balance.

It is right on the edge of this complex system that the intervention finds its place, immersed in an urban context deeply connected to the aforementioned natural features, from which it cannot be separated. It consciously rejects the surrounding built forms, remnants of a bygone era.

Natural elements permeate the entire project—from the aesthetic choices to the materials, from the textures to the construction technologies. The building becomes a reflection of the form and substance of the surrounding landscape. For this reason, even the choice of finishes aims to blur the perception of the boundary between architecture and nature as much as possible.

There are four key materials that define the intervention and anchor the project to its location: White Limestone, Wood, Plaster, and Glass.

• The white limestone, typical of Cagliari’s traditional buildings and of the Tuvixeddu and San Bartolomeo hills—known as Pietra Forte Cagliaritana—will cover the building envelope, emphasizing the project’s rootedness in the city.

• Wood, chosen primarily for the vertical fins on the main façade, clearly recalls the bark of trees, evoking the tall pines covering nearby Monte Urpinu.

• The coarse-grained plaster, in a sandy hue, recalls the nearby Poetto beach and will wrap around the cylindrical stems that conceal the vertical circulation systems—the core and pivot of the entire design.

• Lastly, glass, with its transparency, reflects the crystalline bodies of water and, when tinted in greenish shades, evokes the shifting colors of the nearby salt flats.

Nature, the guiding thread throughout the design process, also dictated the choice of technological solutions. Innovative technological components are seamlessly integrated into the project's sustainable vision. Both private and communal areas will be served by state-of-the-art systems, ensuring the building qualifies as an nZEB (Near Zero Energy Building)