The Costa Smeralda style

The creation of the Costa Smeralda, operated by the homonymous Consortium founded in 1962, marks the beginning of the tourist boom in Sardinia. The area affected by this significant architectural phenomenon, but also economic and cultural, extended about 50 km between Arzachena and Olbia and covered an almost uninhabited slice of land.

The Consortium, whose first members was the Aga Khan Karim, was formed around a very rigid organization chart, whose main programmatic pivot was represented by the Architecture Committee, which carried out the task of controlling and regulating any building action that should take place within the Costa Smeralda, on the basis of a manufacturing program fully supported by the Municipality of Arzachena.

This mode of action soon generated repeated conflicts with the Autonomous Region of Sardinia, which, however, essentially failed to stem the powerful programmatic effect of the Consortium. This is how it happened that the pristine coasts of the area were subject to an intense phenomenon of anthropization. One of the main architects of the operation was the architect Luigi Vietti, inventor of the name Costa Smeralda and of many other place names destined to become very well known soon.

The first of the settlements created by Vietti was Porto Cervo. The urban model used was comparable to that of a medieval village, with the important variant, however, of placing the shopping center of boutiques and hangouts in the center of the “village”.

The toponymy of the spaces inside the “village” is given a function that evokes the very use for which those spaces could or should have been intended: this is how the Passeggiata, the Piazzetta degli Archi and that of the Chiacchie were born. The so-called Mediterranean Style was also born, a totally invented style based on simple forms, obvious volumes, in some way linked to the environmental situation, repeated arches, clear plasters or in any case of pastel colors.

In 1963, the hotel “La Pitrizza” in Vietti was built, consisting of a series of villas completely surrounded by dense vegetation, always characterized by extreme care in the choice of building materials and in architectural formulas, as simple as they are elitist.

Even today, the strong character of the first building projects remains well recognizable compared to subsequent speculative operations, much less attentive to achieving an integration that is as “natural” as possible with the territory.

Update

11/3/2024 - 10:35