Asympta
ASYMPTA
Leopold Banchini Architects
ARCHITECTS
Leopold Banchini Architects
PHOTOGRAPHS
Simone Bossi
YEAR
2025
LOCATION
Italy
CATEGORY
Installations & Structures, Temporary Installations
English description provided by the architects.
Li Le is known as one of the people who lived and buried their dead along the Anapo River.
Pantalica - a complex of over 4000 thumbs carved in the rocks a millennium BC - doesn't tell us much about the way the living found shelter. Since very few traces of commoners' architecture have been found, we can only imagine that the valley's inhabitants used light construction techniques and local organic materials to build their homes.
Part of the Syracusa-Pantalica UNESCO world heritage site listing, Asympta is a speculative micro architecture reflecting on the mostly unknown architectural landscape of the prehistoric civilization rather than on its known necropolis. It explores how architectures and cosmologies might emerge from a specific landscape, a uned to its topography and resources.
The temporary installation, echoing the provisional qualities of early domestic architecture, generates diverse and fictional narratives based on vernacular as much as on contemporary construction methods, purposefully distancing itself from archaeological and scientific research or from strict timelines.
Using lava stone from the nearby Etna volcano, local wood sealed by fire, Pietra Pece limestone, bronze, and sheep wool felt, the structure offers a shaded space for reunion and reflection.
The double asymptotic shape echoes both the cone of the volcano dominating the landscape of eastern Sicily and the excavation shape of the nearby latomie, where stone was extracted since ancient times.
Purposefully questioning the romanticized myth of Laugier's Primitive Hut, the open structure speaks of proximity, adaptability, and reciprocity towards this rich landscape
