Architettura rurale in Valle d’Aosta

For Soardo, professor of Medical Physics at the University of Turin, drawing is part of an almost scientific mentality, and constitutes the means by which to acquire mainly technical, but also partly interpretative documentation of certain realities: not only peasant houses, but even faces of people, special or everyday events. With drawing, more than with the camera, one can allow oneself, according to Soardo, to illustrate the encounters and events of a life, adding a bit of oneself, a sentimental streak, to the images. For twenty years with his drawing paper he went in his free time to rediscover the architecture of the Aosta Valley, to draw emotions from it, but above all to carry out a study on stone and wood constructions, that is, made with materials that naturally arise from the environment. A kind of research therefore, done with non-technical drawing, freehand, but according to a methodology congenial to his profession as a university professor, even if on a very different topic from those he is accustomed to. This volume collects some results of a commitment, reminiscent of that of nineteenth-century travellers, also armed with albums and pencils, to illustrate the story of many explorations. However, a commitment made more of intuition and passion than of a rigorous scientific approach, intended only to describe and classify places, dates, forms, methods, materials. The intention is therefore not to make a textbook for professionals, but to give some further reference to those who work in planning and building, and to stimulate the interest of those who live or visit this extraordinary territory, for the work of unknown builders, who knew how to integrate and merge their works with the environment.