Italy 2015. House number 2 in Italy
The second Italian project was very different from the first one and for Gaia design is was a little bit of painful lesson. Together with the owner of a ruin we made a cooperation with…
The second Italian project was very different from the first one and for Gaia design is was a little bit of painful lesson. Together with the owner of a ruin we made a cooperation with the intention of getting a building permission before selling. Italian legislation in relation to ruins is extremely restrictive and the province of Liguria it is very, very complicated. All Liguria is divided into areas having different limitations and possibilities. Even a ruin situated in an area with the principal possibility for getting a building permission you may not have one. The main problem is that you have to make a formal application before knowing if a permission is possible – and that is costly and take some time and in this case years.
It happens that buyers from North of Europe buy a ruin and then after years of authority’s consideration of the application, have to realize, that what they have, is a worthless piece of land with some big and small stones. The only thing that buyer has now is evidence on paper telling that the ruin will never be a house.
At the end we got the permission and the spot included a building permission was sold and buyer hired Gaia design to make the final design and monitoring the constructions.
I did learn a lot about the legislation I relation to ruins and one important thing is that a renovation and new construction, what is what you do when transform a ruin into a house, is 2 very different cases. I would never recommend anybody from the North to buy a ruin unless they get it very cheap and have a lot of time.
The good experience here was a nice cooperation with my client. 3D animation drawings and photos and of course the internet really changed the possibilities for long distance cooperation’s.