This article was originally published on Domus 1096, December 2024.
The restoration-renovation project for the Church of Nostra Signora della Costa in Levanto, by Genoese studio Caarpa, is delicate and poetic. The origins of this small church date back to at least the 14th century, but the building has been extensively altered over time. As with many minor monuments, the most serious damage occurred around the mid-20th century – a period of rapid growth and cursory heritage protection when chapels large and small all over Italy were indifferently converted into commercial spaces, warehouses and garages.
In those years, the congregation that owned the Levanto church lowered the original floor, sold the marble claddings and divided the interior into two overlapping rooms separated by a generic concrete slab. When Caarpa undertook their intervention, they were faced with a structure that had already been partially restored in the early 21st century, with the demolition of the incongruous slab and the construction of a flat roof.
The new project likewise includes the insertion of an extraneous element within the historic walls, but in this case, the balcony is a refined, self-supporting metal frame that, like traditional choir lofts, is set against the main facade and flanked by a suspended balcony. Near the perimeter wall, it is supported by two thick pillars, conceived as volumes of micro-perforated sheet metal concealing the technical installations.
The supports on the opposite side, meanwhile, are slender HEA beams topped by curvilinear returns that echo the arches of the apse and the side altars. The church has been reopened to the public as a hall for conferences and other events, as well as a guesthouse for short stays. With this in mind, the project firstly satisfies functional needs because it increases the available surface area and organises the open plan into different areas and heights. The space below the mezzanine plays the role of a filter between inside and outside, while on a more prosaic level a new toilet block has been placed on the upper floor. At the same time, Caarpa’s architecture-installation is “a spatial machine that adds fresh glimpses and views of the historic building”, as the architects explain. Ascending the flight of steps that wraps around a pillar, visitors brush along the walls of the old edifice, which are roughened by the remains of decorations created over the centuries.
Having reached the balcony at the top, they can appreciate the monumental staircase of the hall from a new perspective and rediscover the exterior landscape through the central trefoil window. Caarpa’s restoration in Levanto is conservative rather than philological; an operation that has not recomposed an original unity, but emphasises diachronic traces. Softened by its pale blue colouring, the present-day graft can be seen as the most recent addition to a variegated palimpsest of forms, materials and colours that will perhaps continue to be enriched over time.