[...] Even though quite small, it's the cemetery the real heart of all the interventions (in Santa Severina). Thought as an enclosure containing also the precedent cemetery, it evokes the idea of a more intimate place, a " sancta sanctorum " hidden inside. Here too, the apparent simplification of forms it's the result of clear design intentions: a logic based on contradictions, a barely-there axis of symmetry, the use of circles and arcs, like self references. The entire design oscillates between a clear distinction of elements – clearly identified and autonomous – and a sort of continuity, as if the building was carved out from the hill, emphasized by the slope of the valley and variations in height. This oscillation between " architecture achevée " and " talking architecture "  gives rise to a sort of limbo where all the architectural elements, uninterested in monumentality and eloquence, strive for a more unassuming, barely vibrating ...

picture from G.R.A.U. isti mirant stella - Architetture 1964-1980, edited by Kappa / A.A.M. Architettura Arte Moderna, 1981, Roma - Città e progetto 1. Collana di Architettura diretta da Francesco Moschini. [...] The complex logic that undergoes these works let see a tension towards formal simplification, where geometry, far from becoming a field of virtuosity, is an element of clarity and order. [...] In this slaughterhouse two elements are simply pulled together, a circular one for the butchery and a square one for the stable: but still those two volumes, so different, exchange important cross references. Blocked in austere closure – even if the circular shape would suggest opening towards landscape – they seem to hold, wrapping it in their intimacy, an extraneous element, turned mythical through history but reduced to a purely domestic use: so they are those two secret, vaguely hinted references t...