Architecture

The three architectures of the Costa Smeralda

The Costa Smeralda did not grow by accident. Its Architecture Committee was established in 1962, in the founding years of the Aga Khan's project, and the Consorzio Costa Smeralda documents the founding names itself: Jacques Couëlle, Luigi Vietti, Michele and Giancarlo Busiri Vici, Antonio Simon Mossa, Raymond Martin. More than sixty years later, three registers set in that first decade still describe most of what stands between Porto Cervo and Cala di Volpe.

Vietti: the mediterranean collage

Vietti's register is the one most people picture: whitewashed volumes under terracotta roofs, arches, juniper-wood detailing, the whole massed irregularly so a single villa reads like a small hillside hamlet rather than one building. The Consorzio credits Vietti with the Pitrizza hotel and describes his work as well-defined geometry in dialogue with nature — the collage is composed, not casual.

Busiri Vici: white geometry

The second register is purer: white cubic volumes, flat planes, sharp lines set directly against granite and sea, with none of the hamlet's costume. It is associated above all with Michele Busiri Vici, whom the Consorzio credits with the Hotel Romazzino and a close study of Gallura's local materials. Houses in this register read contemporary even where they are decades old.

Couëlle: stone that curves

The third is the rarest and the least conventional. Jacques Couëlle, a French sculptor-architect, built rounded stone walls and cave-like interiors, forms that follow the granite outcrops rather than a straight line. He designed the Cala di Volpe hotel, later completed by his son Savin, and his villas at Monti Mannu, now assigned to the Municipality of Arzachena, are set to host the first Museum of the Costa Smeralda. Organic-stone properties are a small pool, specific in feel: quiet, cool, unusual.

None of this is only history. Giancarlo Busiri Vici presided over the committee, and by his account its review was mandatory — every project examined by the committee before the Municipality of Arzachena and the Superintendency of Sassari — and at times more severe than either; sixty years on, the Consorzio notes, its directives are still followed and respected. That control is why the coast still reads as one place, and it is why a villa search should start from the register. Listings on this coast are described by bedroom count, guest capacity and distance to the water, with rates mostly on request; the architectural register almost never appears as a filter. Yet it decides more of the stay than the bedroom count does — a collage hamlet, a white geometric house and a Couëlle-school stone interior are three different holidays — and knowing which one you are picturing, before any shortlist exists, is the question that shortens the search most.