Mapping Memory: Preserving & Restoring the Landscape of Sicily’s Tuna Fisheries

M.Arch Thesis Project
Tulane University
Advisors: Prof. Carol Reese, Dean Inaki Alday
2023

A minimal approach to adaptive reuse that emphasizes history and landscape regeneration.

[To read the full thesis, click here] While many scholars have established the architectural value of Sicily’s tuna fisheries, few have studied the adaptive reuse of these buildings. In this thesis project, I examine the reuse of tuna fisheries in Sicily and offer a proposal for their reactivation. Many of these seventeenth-to-nineteenth century stone structures, called tonnare, have been converted from abandoned factories into cultural, commercial, and hospitality centers—such as museums, retail districts, and resorts. My study considers the tonnare as actively evolving monuments, emphasizing the durability of cultural memory. Though the fisheries have been substantially altered from their original uses, the traditions they represent still resonate within their surrounding communities. Nevertheless, I find that many of the fisheries’ conversion into luxury properties inadequately conveys the history and material culture of the tuna fishing industry. How, then, might the tonnare be reinserted back into everyday life in ways that support public use and honor their complex past?

Focusing on one case study in southeastern Sicily, I present a minimal approach to adaptive reuse with an emphasis on history, terrain, and landscape regeneration. Understanding these buildings as embedded within a larger geography, rather than as autonomous structures, has been essential to my investigation. Examining the fisheries’ relationships to their surrounding landscape expands the historical site, allowing for a deeper appreciation of the monuments themselves and creating new possibilities for further uses. To this end, I propose preserving and reactivating the tonnara through non-invasive programming, including exhibitions, performance spaces, and an artisan market. The landscape becomes one of not only education and history, but also public recreation and ecological restoration: new paths better connect beachgoers to the water and a small “village” of humble vacation apartments allows visitors to linger. A phased planting strategy will over time repopulate the site with native vegetation, controlling erosion and providing shade. 

As the recipient of the 2022 Robert A. M. Stern Travel Fellowship, I presented on this research at the RAMSA offices in March of 2022.