Petrified Water

Via Roma in Pella is a small but outstanding village on the western shore of Lake Orta that appears to be carved into the rock by a rushing stream. In fact, the long historic street that runs from upstream to the lake was accompanied, in its buried layers, by an old mill stream that has now been tombed. It was an artificial watercourse derived from the nearby Pellino stream and placed on a very steeply sloping orographic plane towards the valley that was once exploited to drive the machines of the factories that until today, with ups and downs, have characterized these Cusio villages known for their faucet and design industries.

Paving Pella’s historic streets today means caring for them by preserving their collective histories and at the same time accommodating current uses by donating accessibility that respects everyone. The project emphasizes the historic sequence of close facades that like stage wings precede the final view of the lake. To do this it uses a few measured gestures and, in fact, a single material, the local white granite of Montorfano declined in cubes and slabs arranged in the classical manner with opposing arches. After all, with this material most of the window frames and portals of access to the historic courtyards had already been made, as well as some paved sections placed on the berm of the tombed brook. So, on the south side a mat of 6/8 cm cubes adapts to every irregularity accepting the insertion of networked utilities.

Similarly, the cube mat enters the small alley grafted to the south of the street. On the north side runs in continuity a long ribbon paved with 100x50x15 cm blocks following every variation in the lay of the existing buildings. The ribbon ends toward the lake, at a widening of the street, with a linear seat made of black granite reminiscent of the ancient black diorite, now exhausted, laid in the 19th century under the prothyrum of the nearby church of Sant’Albino. This is clearly a chromatic exception and also the only relief object in the project. The artifact recalls, by abstracting it, a structure of a boat of about 6 meters with a dense sequence of ribs (ordinates or uprights) 8 cm thick on which rests a large slab (bridge) worked toward the center of the street space with a torus molding, recalling the “gunwale” of boats (upper edge of the boat-hull).

The sloping course of the street gives a constant variation in bench heights from 40 to 90 cm high, as is often the case in mountain streets. A linear light laid on the groundward side of the seating slab reveals in the evening hours the structure of the artifact as an evocative place. A place, by the way, already recognized as peculiar in a 1934 painting by Antonio Calderara (“Piazzetta di Pella”) in which this stretch of the street housed a long stone bench and looked centrally right toward the bell tower of San Giulio, the church on the Island on which, until the Renaissance, Pella depended.

The open spaces persist over time as backdrops or carpets laid out for daily public activities, which gracefully and soberly predispose to the enjoyment of all the spaces served. Gio Ponti wrote that the best paving should have looked like a lake. It is enough for us to thank the people of the lake who have literally drawn life from the water with a simple tribute to their traditions that never cease to amaze.