Year: 1993
Location: Alcamo
Status: Completed

Alcamo: the duality of night and day

This project represents the duality of night and day and the adaptation of this architecture to the morphology of the site by following the curvature of the street and emphasizing the view of the spectacular Gulf of Palermo.
Gianni Ranaulo writes: "The design was an opportunity to express in a conceptual way that what Sicily means to me: "night and day," "good and bad." To accomplish this, I simply divided the architectural elements into two distinct and separate parts: the part symbolizing night is embodied within a cube of "black" rough concrete symbolizing darkness, the untold, women dressed in black, containing all the functional parts of everyday life.
The part symbolizing "day" is represented by a completely transparent veil of glass containing free forms: a large gold rock where the living room is located, closed on the street side and open to the landscape of the city and sea. This rock represents the wealth of the land of Sicily and the value of the family.The materials of the "day" part are: aluminum, perforated plate stock, and glass which confer reality to the concept of lightness, clarity, and transparency of day with a structure made of steel.
In the night part, the use of rough concrete painted black encloses the internal space. The black cube and the gold rock recall the local architecture with its strong Arab-Norman influence. This serves as a contemporary representation of elements that are part of the local collective memory."