BABAU BUREAU _ Mausoleo

Babau Bureau is an architectural and landscape office founded in Venice by Marco Ballarin, Stefano Tornieri and Massimo Triches. The bureau’s approach is based on a pragmatic and site-specific architecture developed from user needs and totally respectful of the urban context. Babau Bureau’s current research focuses on the reuse and transformation of buildings and open spaces as a contemporary requirement and a sustainable development strategy

Buildings are not enough, but sometimes we don’t even need them! For ages, tracing signs on the ground has been the basis of the selecting territory. This activity also defines a way of occupying space, introducing new rules of movement, observation, behaviour and perceptions. The purpose of our project, in a courtyard in Gldani, is to trace the plan of the Mausoleo of Santa Costanza, a classical building which gives a new geometry, a new order, an abstract space to the empty space of the courtyard, generating new perceptions and possibilities. This fundamental and “architectonic” act is rich with custom and popular elements, furniture, recycled materials, plants and people. In this sense, the basic compositional signs of buildings could have the power to define the occupation and use of the space, even if it is not built. This continuous modification alludes to ancient buildings’ capacity for transformation and permanence throughout centuries, even if they change forms and functions.