ON THE STONE RUG TOWARDS THE FUTURE

Story Natural
Country
Slovenia
Year
2018
Storyteller
Romana Kacic-Liden & Mattias Liden
Share:
Overview

Old historical towns along the Adriatic coast are mostly stone-made. The paving is simple, stone-made, yet gives the city a personality, glow and a charm. Palaces are most likely maintained, even guarded, while the paving is not - although the stone is a symbol that gives the city a colour in all its pre-eminence. Stone pavings are unique and unrepeatable, therefore we must maintain and restore them. The stone is a part of the past, therefore we want to pave it’s way to the future.

It does not matter whether you are a native inhabitant or not, you need the knowledge and awareness that there is a great pressure on a beautiful coastal towns in Europe where parts of unsecured heritage are disappearing due to the priority given to economic viability and tourism, rather than giving priority to the maintenance and spatial quality.
The content of stone rugs is attached to the quality of the open space; not just the facade as an element of architecture but also the colours of the sea, sky, and vegetation co-create the city.
"The Stone rugs" that spread along the coastal town Piran's streets, backyards, squares, houses is made of a sandstone, a gray-coloured material from which the oldest Piran carpets are woven, embraces houses, churches, parks, the sea...
The main theme will be discovering the stone rugs in the historic cores, in this case in the coastal town Piran, which are accompanying us at every step of the past, present and therefore, we want to pave their way in the future. The aim is to highlight the very importance of using local materials according to established construction techniques as a sustainable way of building.
A workshop we are proposing is supposed to be a sample of an annual, geographically movable project throughout every single coastal town in the Mediterranean environment, including different profiles and institutions such as archaeologists, restorers, various companies and universities.

European Dimension

In addition to artistic and aesthetic values, stone paving is made according to techniques based on dry construction, the most suitable in the environmental sense. The stone paving – "the stone rugs" link old knowledge and tradition.
The knowledge about paving techniques is very similar along the coast of the Adriatic sea. It has been transmitted along the Mediterranean coastline throughout the history.
The aim of the workshops is to determine the state of the paving, to find common values and to raise people awareness and to present joint proposals for the future of stone pressure on the basis of the use of knowledge from the past, based on the final transparent map of the paving in the historic city core.