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Balancing conservation with new public use, the project begins with a forensic reading of the 1938 power station. The double-height turbine hall, cleared of machinery and replanted as a courtyard, acts as the compositional hinge: its structural rhythm establishes the regulating grid for every contemporary graft. Reversible steel walkways, an opaline polycarbonate veil and a glazed foyer are dimensioned by that matrix, held clear of the historic concrete trusses. The strategy translates the building’s industrial grammar from energy to culture, amplifying the rationalist tropes of verticality and seriality while suturing the mine precinct back into Carbonia’s civic life.
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The project anchors Carbonia’s Great Serbariu Mine heritage park: the huge turbine hall becomes a tree-filled courtyard, reopening historic entrances and stitching new pedestrian axes that connect the museum with the cooling-tower plaza and the miners’ village. Minimal additions keep the trachyte plinth, plaster volumes and soaring concrete trusses legible, ensuring the refurbished landmark resonates with both the rationalist landscape and daily town life.
Adaptive reuse preserves 100 % of the existing concrete shell and trachyte base, avoiding new embodied carbon. Polycarbonate façades and resin floors are demountable and recyclable. Rainwater harvested from rebuilt roofs irrigates the indoor garden and mine park; generous daylight cuts artificial lighting demand, complemented by LED tracks. The envelope is upgraded with high-performance windows and insulation, while natural stack ventilation follows the original chimney effect of the turbine hall; BIM energy modelling verified the strategy.
The scheme reclaims the 1938 Serbariu power station as Carbonia’s Museum of the Twentieth Century, transforming an obsolete engine house into a measured instrument of culture. Ninety-seven per cent of the concrete and trachyte envelope is preserved; every contemporary graft—prefabricated service spine, suspended steel walkways, glazed foyer and opaline polycarbonate screen—is dry-joined and fully reversible, keyed to the rhythm of the original crane trusses. The turbine hall becomes a winter garden whose controlled daylight and 13 m clear height support installations, concerts and debate, while overhead gantries let visitors read the building in elevation. Energy use falls 56 % below the Italian nZEB baseline through stack ventilation, rain-water cooling and LED-DALI lighting, and the embodied-carbon saving approaches 3 800 t CO₂. Outside, re-opened portals and a repaved rail bed stitch the museum to the cooling-tower square and miners’ village, healing the historic fracture between mine and town. The result is a sober, rationalist palimpsest that turns industrial memory into civic value and seeds wider regeneration across the Sulcis landscape.
Restoring life to the power station is more than an architectural upgrade; it heals the fracture between mine and town, turning the machine that once fed furnaces into a civic heart that fuels culture, study and dialogue. Every beam preserved, every new layer added, proves that our industrial past can propel us toward a post-carbon future, not weigh us down.
For more than 35 years SAB has been transforming spaces with intent, treating every commission as an opportunity to regenerate, to listen, and to stitch the landscape back together. SAB operates as an integrated project ecosystem in which architects, engineers, MEP specialists and consultants work shoulder to shoulder, sharing spaces and real-time processes. A craft-driven mindset, coupled with advanced BIM and technological innovation, allows the practice to handle every phase seamlessly—from strategic planning to construction detailing. For SAB, architecture is a conscious, sober and measured cultural device, able to create enduring value while honouring a place’s identity. The Perugia headquarters—part gallery, part creative workshop—hosts more than forty professionals, where daily exchanges of visions and expertise spark each new project.
