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In order to preserve the existing body of Chiesa Diruta, the idea was to cover up the site with a new perforated concrete skin. From the outside it stands as a pachydermic being, glimmering in the sun like a stroke of white that hit the landscape. From the inside, as a capsuled void, sculpted from the emptiness of a ruined church. What we wanted to convey is that there is no need for a restrictive core: not a single main room, not a formal auditorium. Instead, we offer each visitor the opportunity to seat and feel the sound of music, from everywhere it comes. The latin-cross plan of this Chiesa tells us a story of an apse with four different heads, like four sitting areas each one related but still independent. In its center there's the main stage with an oculus, untouched. All the rest develops aside: the old sacristy as an exhibition space, and the lateral chapel as a private concert room; the slatted staircase heading up to the city’s terrace in the sky, and the freight-lift taking staff and artists to the service-floors underground. Everything moved quietly around the same nuclear idea, that was to maximize the inner void of the nave’s space. This way we were able to easily free the lateral vaults for the restrooms, as well as for the gift shop and the bar that stand above them, to the north. There’s still room for a secondary terrace and an observatory point. But with a generous lift and a nearby staircase, set inside the old bell tower, we expect everyone to rapidly reach the third-floor’s choir loft and enjoy its secondary stage and due concert room, like some old glorious pulpit now renewed. Where there was a baptismal font is now the box-office entry, with a tree. And the petals above our heads reinforce the idea of lightness and transcendence while conducing the sound of the ongoing concert to the lower areas of the audience. A Concert-Hall, for us, like a hierophany of big stones and smaller trees that are no longer adored as stones or trees but as something entirely different, and entirely new, that is the non-sacred Sacred space of Grottole.