In this early 2024 Crippaconcept has taken up a new challenge that has come from Terraviva Srl, a company founded under the guidance of the Californian architecture critic Richard Ingersoll, which started out as a teaching department at the Milan Polytechnic and evolved in 2022 into a startup currently being accelerated by B4i – Bocconi for Innovation, offering calls open to architects, urban planners and creative people from all over the world. Initiatives that embrace different contexts: from architecture to urban planning, from landscape design to adaptive reuse. This year, the title proposed was Lignano Pinewood, an architecture competition with the ambitious objective of incorporating an Eco-Hotel complex immersed in the Pineta landscape of the well-known Friuli Venezia Giulia seaside resort, while at the same time ensuring the improvement and preservation of its natural context. Crippaconcept’s response was the LIVING LANDSCAPE project designed in collaboration with the AUDe laboratory – Architecture and Urban Design of the University of Pavia, with which it placed, with great satisfaction, among the finalists.
TerraViva’s request
Lignano is renowned not only for its enchanting beaches of golden sand, but also for the charming pine forest that characterises the city. The latter represents an oasis of tranquillity and biodiversity, with native vegetation reflecting the charm of the Adriatic coast. However, although a significant part of the Pineta is now protected, several plots of land are privately owned, and the pressures of real estate development risk irreparably compromising this precious ecosystem.
The ambitious objective of the call for bids that was proposed by TerraViva, as we said, is to realise the incorporation of an Eco-Hotel complex immersed in the landscape of the Pinewood of Lignano, maintaining intact its natural characteristics and enhancing its biodiversity. At the same time, the participants were asked to conceive a new Urban Plan that would favour the renewal and strengthening of the links between the Pinewood and the rest of the urban fabric of Lignano Sabbiadoro, promoting a harmonious and sustainable development of the city.
The project by Crippaconcept in collaboration with AUDe
The LIVING LANDSCAPE project conceived by Crippaconcept in collaboration with AUDe – Architecture and Urban Design of the University of Pavia strategically works on sustainability, starting from the assumption that the most ecological way to build housing structures in a pine forest is for them to leave no trace once their life cycle and use is over, thus preserving the natural environment. The Eco-Hotel is therefore conceived as a removable system, using maxi-caravans as a settlement approach. This allows trees and soil to be preserved.
Equipped with wheels, the maxi-caravans are easy to place and mobile. The master plan for the positioning of the structures follows that of a citadel made up of courtyards and covered walkways, which are adapted to the trees in the pine forest. The maxi-caravans are organised in clusters to define a temporary village and next to them are built 4 “PINs”, connection points that anchor the eco-hotel to the city and the pine forest.
On the organisational level, however, the proposal is for an elevated path through the pine forest, cutting through the square to connect to the promenade and extend down to the beach. This long suspended footbridge connects the landscape of the pine forest with that of the sea, leaving everything underneath untouched. An elevated cycle/pedestrian path allows people to enjoy the landscape and use it without affecting it, reducing the number of people and ‘traffic’ inside the pine forest, leaving only the perimeter roads accessible to vehicles and enhancing the cycle/pedestrian paths. This walkway brings people up to tree height and transforms the view of the landscape. The square is also made more natural. The trees become the main element.
The results of the competition
The jury, made up of architectural experts such as Martina Rosati, Andrea Federico Toccolini, Nathalie Rozencwajg, Marco Leitão, Federico Minelli, Tatiana Dimou, Thibaut Gevers and Paola Morales O, chose to award the top three positions to other projects(the winners here) on the basis of aesthetic and functional criteria.
“Despite the fact that the LIVING LANDSCAPE project proposed by Crippaconcept together with AUDe,” explains Sergio Redaelli Ceo of the company, “did not place in the first three positions, we are happy to have taken on this challenge with great enthusiasm because it allowed us to develop new ideas related to the use of maxi caravans in a context of sustainability and respect for the environment. We always positively value the possibility of creating new opportunities of use for these modules that we have been working on for decades, and on which we are committed to directing global research to make them even more sustainable, focusing both on the use of innovative recycled and recyclable materials, and on master plans that enhance the territory in which the mobile structures will be placed. Living Landscape is a positive example of this, which we hope will open up new evaluations on the exploitation of private wooded areas, beyond Lignano and the Friulian territory.”
