Restoration of a Catalan Masìa, Les Casetes del Roure, Begues, Barcelona.

The thesis is driven by the desire to raise awareness and enhance the theme of Catalan masìas, typical rural constructions of the territory of northern Spain, and proposes the case study of Les Casetes Del Roure, a masìa built in the municipality of Begues, near Barcelona, around 1800. The work develops from a description of Catalunya, its climate, crops and characters, and focuses on the study of the Begues area, from which emerges the importance of the Garraf Natural Park, the rocky nature of the landscape, the prevalence of cereal fields, vineyards and olive trees, and the conspicuous number of wooded areas, resulting from the increasing abandonment of agricultural activity. Through a careful analysis of the architectural and compositional elements of Catalan rural architecture, a comparison with contemporary Italian architecture and an in-depth historical and evolutionary study of the typology of the masìa, its close link with the land and place is revealed. Indeed, it is emphasized how in the past these buildings held the role of elements of control of the territory, ordering the system of surrounding fields, woods and pastures and at the same time giving rise to a farming and family social organization. The relationship to the landscape is made visible in their construction by the use of local materials, such as limestone extracted from quarries, sand from river beds, lime from the nearest kilns, and wood from forests. A photographic survey of these, which has generated a true atlas, provides insight into the current state in which these artifacts are found and the awareness that nowadays this subtle connection is being lost. The research aims, therefore, to educate about the value of the masìa, understood as an agricultural system, and as a sustainable model viable in the present, and to propose a strategy to reintroduce the "fil rouge" between it and its territory. The project for the restoration of Les Casetes del Roure sees, first, the practice of an evolutionary investigation of the ruin, which revealed its stratification process and its dual matrix as a peasant residence and artisanal site, as a furnace for glass production; second, the examination of the belonging context, composed of agricultural fields and of the network of paths of the masìas in the area. The knowledge attained takes shape and suggests the conversion of the building into a family-run rural farmhouse, in a vision of sustainable and low-density tourism, the redevelopment of the municipality's routes, the insertion of e-bike stations at strategic masìas and the repurposing of public and abandoned ones, in order to educate about the natural and architectural heritage. The case study itself hosts teaching activities, including educational gardens, and a dedicated space for holding craft workshops, in continuity with its past matrix and provides for the reintroduction of pre-existing cultivations. The same "reconnection" approach is applied to the existing volumes, currently disjointed, through the integration of a patio in the central area, which becomes a unifying common space and features a glazed roof. The recovery has been designed with the utmost respect for the existing, with flexible and coherent interventions in the choice of materials and has been guided by the application of principles of sustainability, in terms of construction, of energy, of mobility, and of social inclusion. The project delivers the feasibility of a circular economy farm model of production, consumption and sharing.