MATERIA NATURA ARTIFICIO Piazza-Belvedere al Castello di Cammarata, Agrigento

The project of the Belvedere at the Castle of Cammarata (AG), designed by Margagliotta+Tuzzolino Associati, is an architecture that fosters dialogue between history, nature, and city. Located in an urban context characterized by historical stratifications, the Belvedere develops as a spatial device capable of reinterpreting the material and immaterial traces of the site. Through an approach that integrates landscape and built environment, the intervention concludes a broader project for the historic city, organizing pathways and spaces that redefine the identity of the relationship with the surrounding environment. The Belvedere is conceived as a “habitable box,” a masterful architecture that establishes relationships between matter, nature, and artifice. The wise use of natural and artificial stone creates a place of contemplation and discovery, revealing the surrounding urban and natural landscape while transforming physical boundaries into permeable thresholds. The Belvedere is structured around the idea of a threshold and an enclosure, forming a suspended square that bridges the city and the landscape. This square, on its upper level, defines a metaphysical horizon to aspire to, while descending into a hypogeal space that preserves the stone of the place and the rock into which the box is embedded.