The enlargement as an occasion for the recovery of memory and identity

Abstract

We present the enlargement plan of an isolated cemetery in a small town of the west Sicily as it exemplifies some way to carry out the design for an “addition”. The enlargement faces a still readable and characteristic nineteenth-century building. Even introducing unavoidable innovative characteristics, the architecture we designed tries to resolve the  difficult relationship between the new portion and the old cemetery, bell shaped, in steep slope above the town. The recovery of this place for collective memory, once realized as a closed enclosure, is realized by the mediation of a space which seeks to maintain, recover and reinforce the identity of places altered in the last years by uncontrolled interventions, returning the same memory to the town.