A triangle, a circle, a parallelepiped: a history of stereometry “in between”

text published on C3 Magazine, n.330

versione italiana

Geometry: a triangle wedged between rocks. The measure begins.

There are beaches in Sardinia that seem to have emerged from certain images of the Caribbean, so blue are the waters, white the sands, and cloudless the sky: great places to vacation, but which nonetheless also offer, in the hinterland, precious architectural jewels which suffer no diminishment in comparison with the natural amenities. These are gigantic monuments, sprouting from the landscape, giving the measure of the territory, so totally man-made, yet somehow remaining mostly natural.

The monuments are the Nuraghi, architectural organisms gifted with an amazing architectural brutality, an almost physical force, which radiates all around them, and which involves visitors in their wildness: the huge masses of rocks, piled one upon another, reaching tens of meters in height and about that in thickness, seem placed there by mythical giants, some superhuman character, able to compose a setting in which the almost baroque grace of the curves can stand in comparison with the crude appearance of the stones.