The project involves a part of the countryside and plain of Ferrara (north east Italy) typically dedicated to intensive cultivation. The design intent is to re-read the contemporary farm buildings, rethinking their form and their strategical function. The building tradition of these isolated “cathedrals” that are the historical Ferrara barns, is revived with the use of brick walls, but the shape is changed and more performing in relation to the winds and the landscape. On the one hand is the comparison with the direction of the prevailing winds from east direction that is collected from the shed cut of forty meters on the roof top, the other the body of the building is closed with continuous brick surfaces that have a perforated pattern, balanced by framing precise landscape view of the sorrounding.
The great blacks volumes protruding from the walls, work as a heat accumulator and allows an internal natural ventilation,during the warm season for fodder drying, similar to the function of the traditional porch but with attention to passive energy systems. The building has a massive brick structure of 21 x 42 m. hiding inside a reinforced concrete structure. The double roof flaps are supported by trusses of glued laminated timber 21 meters wide, with tubular galvanized steel rods.
