The new Bar Reef Sansone restaurant stands up on the headland overlooking the homonymous beach, within the Costa Bianca of Portoferraio on the Elba island. This project was born out of the need to create a service structure for one of the most beautiful beaches ion the island. Precisely because of its location within the Parco Nazionale dell’Arcipelago Toscano this project has required design reflections aiming at the preservation the great value of the naturalistic context. The goal has been the implementation of a perfect integration between environment and manufacture; therefore all morphological and material solutions have been directed towards the use of natural environmentally friendly products both as far as the structure and the lighting is concerned.


Design constraints and environmentally friendly choices

For the Bar Reef Sansone the main aim has been to design a   low energy project, both environmentally friendly and biocompatible. The casing of the structure is a prefabricated frame made of steel and wood fully dry made; the floor slabs and the wooden exterior terraces have been raised in order to not modify the original profile of the underlying ground. Virgin sheep’s wool mattresses insulate the internal walls of the building while wood fiber panels insuklate the framed external walls. All this dry mounted material will preserve the condition of the places as originally found when the entire structure was dismantled.

The body of the building has been designed on three levels: on the first the technical rooms and bathrooms; on the second the kitchen and bar with two external terraces; on the third the lookout terrace with the roof garden. Two vertical vegetable gardens cover a large part of the building for which endemic aromatic flowerings and plants have been selected, such as lavender, fennel, myrtle, mint and rosemary. The vegetal gardens are irrigated with meteoric waters collected in a special reservoir positioned above ground; the water is then used for the gardens and cleaning purposes. All installations are new generation products. The use of photovoltaics and bioclimatic devices rates the building at an A4 energetic class.


Unobtrusive and low energy cost lighting

From a lighting viewpoint the structure has been enhanced by respecting the natural light conditions of the spot. A warm tone enhances the texture of the external encasement made of natural wood similar to the colour of the holm oaks that surround the structure. Light zones alternate with shadowy ones where the Mediterranean maquis penetrates the project and becomes thus an additional example of the research for integration with the natural dimension.  

No light poles providing light from above have been taken into consideration to avoid any sort of glare or light dispersion. The whole lighting installation is therefore made up of ground level luminaires providing a total coverage of the service area while the local light is kept untouched. This is the case for Minizip tonda , an unobtrusive marker without glare.

The entire lighting installation obviously uses high energy efficiency LED luminaires. The array of luminaires comprises of low bollards, in-ground markers, luminous handrails and the COOL wall mount luminaire that duly illuminate the wooden walls.



Project Bar Reef, Sansone, Elba Island
Architectural & Lighting Project by Arch. Massimiliano Pardi
Photography Stefano Muti - CSC Arredamenti