Once the building was cleaned of all these materials, it could finally show its very simple structure made of rough cement. It was then cleaned in the lower part, while in the upper part a new wall with cement bricks was made to replace the old wall, made with waste materials. The project responds to the owner’s need to have a storage area/barn on the upper floor and a more convivial space, as well as shelter for tools, on the ground floor with direct access to the path in front. It is here that the owner, a Garelli worker born in 1940, spends most of his time. After a life spent working, he has now made this place his life, never losing a chance to chat with passers-by, and making the refuge an unusual meeting place.

Upon entering you will find a real “furnished” refuge: a small table with chairs and a single window framing the surrounding landscape. An intimate, private, almost secret place.

On the upper floor, instead, the space is used as a deposit for agricultural equipment. If once the building was filled with waste materials, now cement bricks are used. The project reinterprets in a contemporary way the traditional walls used in the old farmhouses and barns. Nowadays the Refuge is used as a tool shelter and as a deposit for small dried “bales of hay”: that’s why a perforated or almost completely open wall face, which was normally suitable for hay drying, was not necessary.

The materials are left raw, simple and authentic, as was the existing portion on the ground floor. Cement bricks for the upper part, fir wood for the roof, brick tiles and raw sheet metal for the channels and downpipes.
The existing sheet metal door has been painted brass-colored, to emphasize the precious value of this little refuge for Mr. Benvenuto, and to indicate that behind that door there is an emotional bond, a story and all those stories that we still have to remember because they are also our own stories.

Text provided by the architect.

Materials are left rough and simple; galvanized steel for the kitchen, larch planks for flooring and big sliding doors, windows in unpainted galvanized steel, simple pipes for the water supply. A small green shelter in the vegetation, privileged observation point of the changing of the seasons of the surrounding park. Park that is left wild in some areas and in other transformed into garden of flowers or simple green space, punctuated only by beautiful nude rocks scattered in the property.

Text provided by the architect.