Writing on the staff of a wounded city, finding a balance between memory and vision to give shape to a new time that also safeguards the past. As in a musical composition, the Pentagramma project brings together and reassembles different elements in a harmonious and coherent composition. Designed by Dunamis studio, based in L’Aquila, the project is a social housing intervention that goes beyond mere post-earthquake reconstruction, transforming a building damaged by the 2009 earthquake into an opportunity to rethink living spaces and the relationship with the urban context.
The name of the project itself, Pentagramma, alludes to a harmonious composition that weaves together different fragments—spatial, temporal, and symbolic—into a single, unified design. The building rises over four above-ground levels. The ground floor hosts common areas, garages, and cellars, while the upper floors contain six apartments—two per floor—organized symmetrically around a central staircase. The project completely redesigns the building envelope, introducing contemporary and functional elements. The main south façade is characterized by long, overlapping balconies connected to the living areas of the apartments, equipped with colorful, movable technical blinds that ensure privacy, solar shading, and a dynamic chromatic animation.
On the north façade, the service loggias are organized along two symmetrical axes and feature perforated metal parapets in vibrant colors, echoing the tones of the south-facing blinds and creating a lively, cohesive effect. The six-pitched roof reinterprets the traditional pavilion form, contributing to a recognizable and coherent architectural identity, where the geometry of the roof converses with the lines of the façades.
Like a musical score, the architecture is structured in movements, playing with the contrast between white surfaces and colorful inserts, between solids and voids, between opaque planes and mobile screens. The result is an architecture that affirms the possibility of a contemporary way of inhabiting public housing. The project does not merely restore the original volumetric profile of the pre-existing building, but aims to give it an architectural identity that resonates with the urban fabric and engages in dialogue with the memory and ongoing transformations of the city.
CREDITS
Project: Pentagramma
Architects: Dunamis
Location: L’Aquila (AQ), Italy
Year: 2024
Photographs: Aldo Amoretti
