Built slowly, on purpose.

Lime, not cement

The original casale was built in carved limestone bound with lime mortar. We rebuilt it the same way. The new wings were finished in intonaco — the same lime-based render — rather than cement. Lime is breathable; the walls release the humidity they take in, instead of trapping it. It is also lower in embodied carbon than Portland cement, weathers more gracefully, and means that future owners can repair what we built using the same materials and the same artisans, fifty years from now.

Food, in a fifteen-kilometre radius

The kitchen at Casa Andrea is stocked from the same fifteen-kilometre radius the house sits in. Vegetables come from a smallholding at the edge of San Vito, or from the morning market in Ostuni. Fish, when it appears, is from the boats at Torre Guaceto or Brindisi — never frozen. The cheese is from the dairyman ten minutes down the road. The wine is from a handful of producers in the Itria valley. The olive oil is from the grove around us. We do not pretend any of this is unusual — the radius is just what's around us. We just refuse to drive past it.

Solar on the roof

The house has been wired for the sun. A photovoltaic array on the south-facing flat roof covers most of the daytime electrical load — pool pump, kitchen, hot water — and feeds back into the grid when the house is empty. We do not publish a kWh figure until we have a full season's data, but the design intent is for the house to be a net producer of electricity in the high-sun months of June through September.

Water, measured by season

The pool was sized for two families — long enough to swim, not the wide blue rectangle that has become the norm in the region. The cover stays on at night through the hot months, which is when more water is lost to evaporation than to swimming. Rainwater harvesting from the flat roofs of the new wings is sized; the cistern is planned for next winter, for the kitchen herbs and the few irrigated plants near the house. The rest of the property never needed irrigation. It never has.

Travel: short-haul, on purpose

Brindisi airport is thirty-five minutes from the gate. Bari is just over an hour. Both are well served by direct flights from London, Paris, Brussels, Zurich and the major German hubs. We do not pretend that flying is carbon-free — but the regional choice is meaningfully better than connecting through Milan or Rome, and for guests coming from northern Italy, the train to Lecce, with a short pickup at the station, is the lowest-impact route to the gate.

What we are still working on

The rainwater cistern, mentioned above, is the next item. After that: a small heat pump for shoulder-season comfort, sized to the solar capacity (in sizing). A proper compost loop with the neighbour's chicken coop (in conversation, slowly). We will update this page honestly as those land, with dates and with what worked and what didn't. The site is not a brochure — it tries to keep up.