EARTH ARCHITECTURE IN SARDINIA. IDENTITY AND DESIGN

Landscapes and culture of earth architecture
Earth architecture is a constituent part of Sardinia’s landscape and in particular of the Medinas in the island’s southern plains which comprise large areas of grain production and clay soils. In this sense, Sardinia is a part of a much broader Mediterranean context in which environmental and cultural relationships and analogies have resulted in a melting pot of identities outlining an extraordinary mosaic of similarities and differences.
As in most Mediterranean countries, in Sardinia, earthen construction is never marginal and rural but is rather part of some of the island’s most important and highest quality urban fabrics. The urban landscapes characterized by earth architecture can be introverted, generated by the dwelling cell of the Mediterranean courtyard house and its labyrinthine urban fabric, or they can be open and extroverted, with fenestration aligned along the principal urban roads.
Furthermore, over time, earth architecture has proven to be perfectly capable of accepting and integrating innovation while in continuity with the bearing wall tradition. In the 1800s, for example, mud brick building technique served neoclassical architecture while in the early 20th century, it incorporated the technologies and languages of the international Liberty style1 (the Italian version of art nouveau).
Since the 1950s, however, a crisis regarding the culture and values of historic building and living led to the rejection of the practices and materials of earthen construction. At the time, a universe of knowledge and material culture came very close to extinction. Only in the 1990s did the emergence of a new sensibility give impetus to a revitalized approach to earth architecture in innovative terms, starting with the preservation and restoration of entire landscapes and historic buildings along with an enormous patrimony of urban fabric constituting one of the major roots of the region’s identity. […]