This vCard is For Sale, Buy it for: $7,50

House of the beam - Balilla House of Arborèa

On the west coast of Sardinia, in the Campidano di Oristano region overlooking the Gulf of Oristano, stands Arborèa, a small agricultural center of about 4,000 inhabitants.

The name derives from the Latin term “arboreta” which means bush, woods. A municipality built on an area that up to less than a century ago was totally dominated by vegetation and marshes.

Arborèa, in Sardinia, was the center of one of the very first reclamation works. The works in the Terralba-Sassu area began in 1926.

Just off the main square of Corso Italia, the architecture manifests itself in a completely different stylistic language.

The fascist headquarters is a set of two buildings consisting of the House of the Beam (Casa del Fascio - Torre Littoria ) with the Littoria Tower and the fascist youth center Balilla House (Casa del Balilla) designed by Giovanni Battista Ceas show Italian rationalism.

The Casa del Balilla, later Casa della G.I.L., has a central block, which housed the gym, changing rooms and offices on the two floors, and is connected to two reinforced concrete wings that frame a large outdoor swimming pool in the back.

In the façade the lower part, with the large entrance and the long ribbon windows, is clad in exposed brick, while at the top it presents a smooth and light plaster masonry with six circular windows.

The building was altered at the end of the sixties of the twentieth century with heavy interventions that compromised the unity of the design, especially in the interiors, eliminating in particular a circular basin, delimited by a series of staggered brick pillars inside the atrium. which led to the swimming pool. A restoration has the task of restoring the characteristics of the building.

On the side of the Casa del Balilla stands the Casa del Fascio, laid on two floors and completed on the left by the tall lictorian tower with a square plan, with a round arch. The rectangular building has a slightly raised ground floor which falls back, allowing the opening of a portico with exposed brick pillars.

Here, too, the use of exposed brick and light-colored plaster differentiates the parts from a chromatic point of view, highlighting themselves as a recurring architectural motif in the designer.

The Casa del Fascio features a soaring bell tower, a prominent feature of many New Fascist Cities.

The bare geometric shapes and linearity of this group of buildings contrast dramatically with the architecture that surrounds the nearby main square of Arborea.

Map: House of the beam - Balilla House of Arborèa