Architrend Architecture’s project of Pietre Nere Resort had started when the main building was already completed with its classical design and heavy, symmetrical walls and windows.
The design approach was intended to give a lightweight effect and to introduce a sense of dynamism to the entire construction with large high-ceiling windows and doors connected with the surrounding area.
The result seems to confirm that design choices with contemporary materials and tecniques can make the difference realizing contemporary high quality design also starting from existing situation, as well as destabilizing classical and traditional fixed design approach.
Pietre Nere Resort is located in an area on top of plateau of Hyblaean Mountains sloping towards the sea, near to several archaeological, architectural and natural areas of great interest, such as the “Cava d'Ispica”or the baroque cities of the “Val di Noto", where the landscape is characterized by a web of dry stone walling.
In the countryside between the towns of Modica and Ispica the building stands quietly isolated in the landscape appearing with its contamination of classical and contemporary design: the heavy walls with classical elements and windows as holes of the existing building are juxtaposed to lightweight, transparent high-ceiling windows and doors at the ground floor.
A glass compass door defines an ideal frame of entrance to the hall designed as a suggestive spatial dimension. The existing columns are finished with irregularly drilled backlit panels, suggesting a recall to the irregular holes on the rocks of the close archaeological area of cave civilizations.
The high-ceiling windows and doors make possible a visual continuum through the hall to the courtyard, allowing the view of the steel courtyard's roofing.
Like a patio with impluvium the courtyard is characterized by a curved steel roof made of a rhomboidal network structure: an unique space delimited by the two wings of the existing block on short side and by high-ceiling windows and doors on the long side, able to connect seamlessly the exterior garden in the front and the relax area with swimming pool in the backside.
