"Spatium ad Omnes"

Along the coastline of the enchanting region of Calabria, in Southern Italy, there are the ruins of an ancient complex: the Thermal Baths of Curinga.

Built during the Imperial Era, this archaeological site stands as proof of the advanced engineering, opulence, and socio-cultural significance of the ancient bathing complexes, offering us a glimpse into the fascinating world of the ancient Romans.

Together with the Municipality of Curinga, the competition asked the participants to protect and musealize the Thermae, simply designing around it a roof, a fence, or a volume, to make this archaeological site open to visitors again. Is it possible to bring life back inside these thermal baths from Roman times?

The project idea develops from the intention of offering a solution that serves as protection for the area of the ancient Baths of Acconia, facilitating, at the same time, its fruition by favouring accessibility for all categories of visitors.

An open and shared space, designed to include and involve spectators who, through the Spatium ad Omnes project, become the protagonists of a cognitive experience of an important archaeological heritage. From the road we reach an initial clearing that invites visitors to access the archaeological site; a square that welcomes and allows access to the thermal area through paths made up of ramps, changes in view heights, and stops. The visitors are involved in a cognitive process that allows them to approach the ruins from a series of extraordinary viewpoints, meticulously selected and accessible only thanks to the project developement. The itinerary traverses the clearing in two directions, orthogonal to each other: a cardo and a decumanus that, after a series of contemplative pauses, lead to the outdoor space, designed and conceived as an open-air theatre, where it is possible to stop and observe, listen, contemplate and share the emotions of an extraordinary experience. The horizontal covering element, whose surface is drawn by the projection of the ruins of the ancient complex, defines the rooms and museumizes the space. A surface that originates from a geometric element of a square, which is negated in its rigidity by modifying itself in correspondence with the accesses to the area, making immediately visible the directions to follow in moving within the designed space. The roof mainly performs the function of enveloping and preserving the archaeological site and is supported by a series of thin vertical elements – or pilotis – that in their unravelling, in an apparently random way, recompose and evoke in a preordained way the volumes that in the past defined the space of the ancient thermæ (frigidarium, tepidarium, calidarium). Beams, pillars and metal-mesh curtains that go beyond their material value, elevating themselves to conceptual projections of a past that is now remote but which, thanks to the project, regains its own space.

The final outcome is a project that protects and encourages the visit of the complex, offering a concrete response to a traveller who comes to these lands and becomes the protagonist of a unique experience made of history, memory and continuous new discoveries.

Progetto pubblicato in:

1 / Cervesato Alberto, Antiga Tommaso, Proca Elizaveta, "Architectural Experimentations: New Meanings for Ancient Ruins", in Architecture n. 4(3) – Special Issue – Conservation of Architectural Heritage. New Urban Perspectives: Conceptual, Methodological, Technical and Management Advances, MDPI, Basilea, 20 agosto 2024, pp. 639-650. ISSN: 2673-8945.

2 / Cervesato Alberto, Antiga Tommaso, "Recinti sospesi", in Cardani Luca, Korolija Aleksa, Salihbegovic Amra, Semprebon Gerardo, Tognon Alisia, Tolve Valerio (a cura di), Traiettorie. Il progetto di Architettura tra pensiero e pratica. ProArch Atlas – Undicesimo Forum ProArch, Società Scientifica ProArch, Roma, 2024, pp. 160-161. ISBN: 979-1280379313.