“Lessico Famigliare”: Toward a New Paradigm of Spontaneous Rural Architecture in North-Western Sicily: From Historical Testimony of Peasant Culture to Sustainable Resource

The research proposes a reinterpretation of so-called spontaneous architectures (Rudofsky, 1964) in the Sicilian north-western countryside, considering them as a system of “identity fortresses” and marking a paradigm shift in their interpretation, from a heritage of historical evidences of the consolidated structure of the countryside physical environment (Pagano & Daniel, in L’architettura rurale italiana [Italian rural architecture]. Hoepli editore, 1936), to a resource for the new housing needs of a contemporary society (Germanà, in L’architettura rurale tradizionale in Sicilia: conservazione e recupero [Traditional rural architecture in Sicily: conservation and recovery]. Publisicula Editrice, 1999). Single phantasmic entities are seen, not as isolated monads in the landscape, but rather intertwined by an invisible line, as protagonists of a narrative that reveals the vital nucleus of architecture (Culotta, Insediamenti nuovi nella Valle dell’Eleuterio [New settlements in the Eleuterio Valley]. Medina, 1990), allowing the construction of an identity through the recognition of the permanence of shapes in space. As dialectal phrases in the 1963 novel, Lessico Famigliare by Natalia Ginzburg, these sharp-edged prismatic volumes, embedded in the ground, mono-material and monochromatic from their base to the sky line, are a simple formal expression, having the strength to make a recognizable place and to establish their belonging to a specific territory. The relationship between territory and these small buildings is fundamental in the structure of the landscape which, considering the changes in the contemporary social and working organization, can drive toward the construction of a new settlement geography. Saving these lexical forms from oblivion, in order to pass them on to the next generations, does not simply mean preserving them but involves a further effort, finding the right measure, through even a minimal transformation, to re-establish a natural relationship with them (Collovà, in Piccole figure che passano [Small figures that pass]. 22publishing, 2012). The identification of characters expressing a representative class of artifacts, reconfigured through the architectural project, is one of the objectives of this research, in order to produce new interpretative and operational keys of transformation, making these rural structures of north-western Sicily as places of an in-fieri tale, no longer simple historical attestations but places that serve the needs of individuals and communities, rediscovering the authenticity of the architecture vital nucleus in a contemporary Mediterranean setting.