Architects: SM-arch Location: Capaci, Italy Project team: Maria Flaccavento, Salvatore Ingrao, Vania Santangelo, Serafino Sgarlata Structure: Salvatore Bruno Photographs: Salvatore Gozzo
The relation with the verticality of the mountain at the back of the house and with the sea horizon in the far distance represents the generating element of the development of the volumes. Their simple shapes and the compact horizontal fronts express, by refusing the doubled elevation, an architecture which proposes an actual integration between what is built and the ground and takes roots thus recalling the idea of chunks of rock broken off the flank of the mountain.
Located in the higher part of the lot, the two tangent volumes, intended for the two housing units, diverge thus guaranteeing a further exposure and enclosing a part of the garden more withdrawn and introvert, open solely to the sea and the ‘Femmine’ island landscape. The project seeks to dialogue with the natural elements already swallowed up by the disorderly growth of the urban fringes. It cuts off the sight of the urban context , closes itself to it and, in the mean time, reopens towards the city at the level of the roof- garden gaining a privileged view on the gulf.
The essentiality of the volumes is, by contrast, matched by seeking a more complex articulation both in the plan and in the space organization . Such articulation develops throughout the path, thanks to the osmosis of the two housing units and of the interior with the exterior, and through the binomial compression- expansion resulting from the study of space in the house sections.
The two houses make a morphological unit, but differ in their typological caracteristics: on one hand, the bigger unit, hosting one family, is conceived according to the internal organization principle of the continuity of collective space and thus reduces the bedrooms to the minimum size; on the other, in the smaller unit, designed for a couple of elderly, functions are organized according to tradition.
