Sassari, “Eugenio Tavolara” Handicrafts Pavilion

The pavilion is surrounded by green public gardens near the Garibaldi Hemicycle.
The pavilion, created for ISOLA in 1956 with the aim of exhibiting and enhancing the products of Sardinian craftsmanship, is Ubaldo Badas's most significant work. It was created with the recovery of the expressive possibilities of the materials, variously used and combined in the chromatic combinations, in the arrangement of the colored tiles, in the imaginatively decorated railings. Today, the building has been significantly altered both in the partially buffered openings and in the interior spaces.
The volumes of the building are presented outside in a very articulated and lively way and enclose the large internal exhibition spaces: on the ground floor there are the necessary pillars, while an internal staircase, decorated with the steatite reliefs of Eugenio Tavolara's “Sardinian Ride”, leads to the unique space of the upper level.
The central nucleus is the courtyard where the bright windows of the exhibition rooms supported by light pillars overlook, while outside the long wall accompanies a sort of “water path” in the tub enhanced by the ceramic reliefs colored with figures of animals and men, the work of Giuseppe Silecchia, also author of the large majolica sculpture placed on the patio.
Among the most important changes are the closure of wall E, once opened by a long rectangular window and today instead characterized by a large blind surface, and the external staircase, which now rests on the wrought iron, but was actually suspended on the water of a larger tank than the current one with an effect of extraordinary lightness.

History of studies
A review of studies can be found in the bibliography relating to the fact sheet in the volume of the “History of Art in Sardinia” on nineteenth-century architecture (2001).

Bibliography
"A Sassari, mostra dell'artigianato sardo", in Domus, 328, 1957, pp. 37-44;
G. Altea-M. Magnani, Pittura e scultura del primo '900, collana "Storia dell'arte in Sardegna", Nuoro, Ilisso, 1995, pp. 164-65;
F. Masala, Architettura dall'Unità d'Italia alla fine del '900. Nuoro, Ilisso, 2001, scheda 153.