Riqualificazione campeggio La Vecchia Torre - Gallipoli

Landscape and Eco-Compatible Redevelopment of the "La Vecchia Torre" Campsite Through Green and Blue Infrastructure to Create Ecosystem Basins

• The project

  Today, Salento is a territory at risk of desertification. The centuries-long conquest of land for the cultivation of wheat and olive monocultures at the expense of ancient forests, the indiscriminate use of underground water resources, the use of pesticides, and more recently, the unstoppable spread of Xylella have irreversibly marked the destiny of an entire region.

  Yet Salento, since its emergence from the seabed, has always been a land of water: a place where the boundary between land and sea is not clear-cut and does not end at the jagged coastline, but penetrates kilometers inland. The wetlands of Salento (known as “padule” in the Lecce dialect), in addition to hosting high concentrations of birds, mammals, and fish, were once thought to be the main vectors of malaria transmission and were therefore labeled as "unhealthy areas to be reclaimed and sanitized." Fascism became the mouthpiece of this "war" against the unhealthy territory by implementing comprehensive land reclamation policies, which led to the current configuration of the Salento landscape.

  For millennia, humans have desperately tried to impose their anthropic systems on nature, causing irreversible environmental changes. Today, the global climate crisis presents us with the immense challenge of redefining our strategies and objectives. This raises a critical question: is it possible to rethink a re-naturalized system in which human presence, though limited and respectful, can coexist with and even "nourish" the ecosystem rather than deplete it? And where better to start than with water?

  The following reflection deepens and expands upon the solutions proposed for the design competition focused on the landscape and eco-sustainable redevelopment of the La Vecchia Torre campsite in Gallipoli. Developed in collaboration with Arch. G. Cucciniello, Arch. G. Di Marino, Arch. G. Cacciatore, and Dr. G. Cannoletta, the project focuses on the use of Sustainable Urban Drainage Systems (SUDs) to create wetlands by reusing the campsite’s greywater.

• Info

  Type
  Competition

  Place
  Campeggio La vecchia Torre, Sp 108, Gallipoli

  Dimensions
  10 hectares

  Client
  Famiglia Coppola

  Team
  Arch. Roberta Pellé, Arch. Giulio Cucciniello, Arch. Giuseppe De Marino, Arch. Giulia Cacciatore, Dott. GIanluca Cannoletta
  
  Year
  2023

Drawings by Pourriproject