Relitti. Nuova sede Fondazione Biscozzi|Rimbaud, Lecce

The building housing the Biscozzi-Rimbaud Foundation stands on the eastern flank of Piazzetta Baglivi, in the historic center of Lecce; a narrow passage separates it from the 18th-century structure of Santa Maria della Provvidenza, better known as the Church of the Alcantarine. The building was never a palatial residence; only a few stone inserts and an austere "mignano (balcony) on corbels adorn its volumes. The typological syntax is that of the domus cum curte, widely diffused in the Grecìa Salentina area, here featuring a small enclosed courtyard at the front and a garden at the rear of the lot. The criterion followed in the restoration and adaptive reuse project was not to betray the arrangement of the existing structure, seeking instead to integrate the various parts that, over time, have aggregated onto the original layout. It is a principle of continuity - or subtle innovation - that departs from any mannered modernism, yet without resorting to mimicry or concealment, allowing the necessary yet discreet intrusions to be conducted "in our contemporary manner," to quote Camillo Boito. The project recovers and revitalizes a correspondence with the context’s characteristics through the very ars aedificandi - a building ethos, a legacy - which became the material, immanent foundation upon which to base and guide the design and choices at every scale of modification.