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This June, we will begin the complete renovation of the roof over the kitchen in our courtyard in Trastanello. The plan is to rebuild it using traditional methods—working with local canes, clay, and stones, just as it would have been done generations ago. But every such project begins much earlier. At the end of February, we went out to harvest the canes, the essential first step in the process. They need time to dry properly, so they will be ready for use in the summer. What

The Model – Holding Trastanello in Hand There are moments in this project when distance becomes part of the story. One of them happened during a winter in England, in the quiet of the studio, where the old priest's house in Trastanello took shape again—this time as a model. Built carefully and in exact proportion to the real structure we measured on site, the model became a precise and almost tactile reflection of the house. Every wall, every angle, every relationship between

1. Reviving Vasca – A Place to Cool Down In 2019, together with friends and volunteers, we decided to bring new life to a forgotten water reservoir in Trastanello known as vasca. Decades ago, it served local villagers as a place to wash clothes, but over time, it had been abandoned and slowly filled with mud. The first step was simple in idea but demanding in reality: empty it completely. Bucket by bucket, we removed layers of sediment until the original structure revealed it

The Summer We Built a Living Roof. Trastanello, Summer 2016 It was our first summer at Trastanello, and one wing of the old priest house had a collapsed roof — open to the sky, exposed to every rain the Ligurian Apennines could deliver. We knew we needed help, and we knew we wanted to think ambitiously. We wrote to two institutions: the Department of Architecture at the Slovak University of Technology in Bratislava, and the Faculty of Art at the Technical University of Košice

The Evolution of a Room There was a moment when this room was barely a room at all. The roof had collapsed, the floor had disappeared, and what remained were raw stone walls—open to the sky, to rain, to time itself. It was less a space to enter and more a fragment to observe. And yet, step by step, it began to change. Today, a green walking roof rests above it, alive with vegetation and quietly blending the structure back into the landscape. Beneath it, a ceiling made from lo

Finally – Clay Plaster A nostalgic memory. A faint echo of childhood. The pleasantly cool summer kitchen at my grandparents’ house during long, hot holidays. That feeling stayed somewhere in the background for years—and somehow, it led us here. We stepped back in time, quite literally, searching the surrounding landscape for a local source of clay suitable for plastering. What we found was not just material, but a process. We built a simple device for sifting the خاک, experim

Mending the Door The entrance to the courtyard had been slowly falling apart for decades. By the time we first pushed it open, the bottom of the old plank door had rotted away entirely — a ragged gap where solid wood had been. The obvious fix would have been a new board. But from the moment I walked into this courtyard — its eardeflower tree, its great stone blocks, its massive timber beams — I felt something closer to Japan than Liguria. A quality of presence. Of beautiful i

WATER, COMMUNITY, AND THE LONG VIEW Reflections on a summer inspection and the path ahead In August 2021, a small group of us from the Trastanello community, joined by two volunteers who had travelled from France, made our way up through the forest above the village to inspect something easy to overlook until it fails: the local water source that feeds Trastanello's irrigation system. What we found told a familiar story of upland infrastructure and mountain weather. A violen

A Village Becomes a Gallery On the 10th of August 2024, Trastanello transformed into something we had never seen before—a living, breathing open-air gallery. For one day, art stepped out of studios and into the streets, doorways, and quiet corners of the village. At the heart of it was Sophie Dickens, Trastanello resident, who presented a collection of her paintings and sculptures. Together, we helped her spread the exhibition throughout the village, allowing visitors to d

In 2016, our courtyard in Trastanello became a small experimental landscape where architect I can’t directly access or inspect the photos in that Google Photos link. If you’d like, you can upload a few key images here and I’ll identify the plants much more precisely. That said, based on your location in Trastanello (Liguria), your earlier description (elderflower tree in the courtyard), and typical vegetation used in low-cost green roof projects in that region, I can

Paradiso Ligure Liguria is often seen only from the coastline—the glittering sea, colorful villages, and busy promenades. But for us, Paradiso Ligure lies beyond that first impression, deeper in the valleys where time slows down and stories remain written in stone. Our journey through Liguria has taken us far from the crowds. We’ve walked through forgotten valleys, explored old towns still carrying the marks of past earthquakes, and discovered hidden churches and small chape

The Hidden Spring Chamber Just a few meters from vasca—no more than twenty—lies another, more discreet water source. In 2019, we turned our attention to this underground chamber, once used to collect fresh drinking water flowing directly from beneath the forest. Like vasca, it had been neglected for decades, filled almost entirely with mud. With the help of friends and volunteers, we carefully emptied and cleaned the chamber, restoring its original purpose and structure. When