The House of Culture is a public building for recreational events and multimedia productions designed by +tstudio for the small municipality of Aquilonia (AV) in the Campania hinterland. The project intervenes on an existing building used as a nursery school, later decommissioned due to deterioration and structural instability following the 1980 Irpinia earthquake and fire. The project, completed in 2015 and financed as part of the Campania Region’s public works for safe buildings, consisted in the seismic adaptation of the former nursery school and its reuse to meet the local community’s need for flexible spaces for collective use, capable of bringing citizens together around events and demonstrations all over the year, not just seasonally. The essay traces the design process that led to the construction of the House of Culture with a particular emphasis on the role of this building in relation to the community and the territory on which it stands.
