The fourteenth-century castle of Ivrea had been closed to the public for much of its recent life. The commission was to make it reachable again – and to remake the ground it stands on.
The intervention is a steel-framed access structure clad in a timber louvre screen, set against the castle's south flank. It does not touch the historic masonry: a deliberate gap runs the full height between new and old, so the addition reads as a separate object standing beside the monument. The frame is bolted and demountable; nothing about it is irreversible.
The climb is nine metres. Rather than a code-minimum stair, the steps were set outside the usual proportion – a low riser and a long, generous tread, closer to the gradonata of a monumental approach than to a service stair. A visitor arrives at the castle without arriving out of breath, which, on a site whose whole purpose was to be made reachable again, is the point.
Beyond the structure, the project remakes the whole open area on the car-park side of the castle: parking reorganised, green space defined, pedestrian routes and roads redrawn. Role: author of the full drawing set – design development, construction details, external works and public realm, and all municipal permit files.
