Three little fireplaces

Three houses, three hearths, three raw materials. The project recasts the austere geology of the Crocefieschi highlands as an interior condition, using matter itself as its primary medium. Concrete, iron and wood are not applied finishes but agents of spatial definition, their juxtaposition constructing both atmosphere and structure. The palette is deliberately archaic. Concrete is read as the contemporary analogue of the local puddinga—a sedimentary conglomerate of rounded pebbles and sand bound by natural cement—reframing a vernacular geology through a modern tectonic language. As with the nearby Castello della Pietra in the Rocche del Reopasso, the architecture appears less imposed than lodged: volumes grip, settle into, and are shaped by a constructed topography of concrete. The interior becomes a kind of artificial landscape, where space is understood as a process rather than a given—an accumulation of layers that register time, erosion and persistence within change.