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Architects: Vittorio Massimo Architetto
- Area: 70 m²
- Year: 2019
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Photographs:Vittorio Massimo
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Manufacturers: Secco Sistemi, Foscarini
Text description provided by the architects. The project originates from the request to have a new functional space for the family firm (a brand that produces 3D printed jewelry), dedicated to a warehouse and a small showroom, and at the same time new separate access to the first living floor. The building on which the intervention was carried out is a residential volume from the second half of the twentieth century that takes up the local typology of the farmhouse with an elongated plan, to which a second unit belonging to another property is located adjacent to the east (the old recently renovated barn) and to the south, to then turn on the west side, a portico of great depth.
The concept of the intervention starts from the desire to respect the local rural character of the building, adding a new volume that takes up the typology present on site of the single-pitched tool shed, located on the short side of the buildings and open along the axis North/South. We, therefore, started with the demolition of the old portico, thus freeing the west side of the building. So here a new volume has been grafted, imagined with a unique slope in order to resume this architectural image, which can be found in the buildings that are inserted in the adjacent hills.
The point of contact with the old building is marked by high cor-ten elements that hide a small window of a closet to the north and the staircase to the terrace and access to the first floor to the south. This area paved in wood fits into the main single-pitched volume, effectively becoming a “pocket terrace” closed by an extra-clear glass parapet, in order not to affect the stereometric image of the new volume. The new west side that closes the latter is clad with recycled bricks, thus using the same traditional material, generating however slightly overhanging random bands to denounce its contemporaneity, recalling the old grips of the unfinished fronts.
The north and south sides, wanting to echo the shady voids below the historic canopies, are thought of as large splay clad in cor-ten, with a generous window facing south to frame the landscape. The attic that acts as a roof/terrace, left internally in exposed concrete, is broken in one point creating a height difference of 45 cm, resolved with a fixed glass in order to bring light deep into the volume and obtain a seat that looks at the hills on the top. Along the south side of the house a new shallower, slender and light portico has been rebuilt, totally in cor-ten, also a contemporary reinterpretation of the old typology. Two low concrete partitions, which follow the splay of the main front, contain the movements of the ground, inviting you to enter the small showroom.
