studioforma

Like an erratic rock

The intervention lies within a typical suburban context, poor in tensions and density. The lot, narrow and elongated, is parallel to a blind neighborhood street. The client’s request for a house with wide views of the outdoor areas, in relation to the shape of the site and the features of the context, generated the specific typology of the project: an introverted house, articulated around two courtyards in a relationship of diagonal symmetry between them.

The construction consists of a reinforced concrete frame, with honeycomb brick walls, continuing an Italian tradition which, by necessity, has used the reinforced concrete frame within a substantially massive masonry logic. The project consciously assumes continuity with this tradition: in the raw construction, all the frame structures were entirely covered in brick, to create continuous support on which a 3.5 cm thick traditional plaster, made of pure hydraulic lime, could be applied. No external wall insulation sounds empty, the insulation is all internal.

All the house’s primary spaces are organized on the ground floor; on the first floor a smaller, set-back volume houses an area dedicated to work and study.

Few openings on the external fronts, large plaster surfaces shimmering under the light, the rawness of certain details: everything aspires to give an abstract image to the construction, to deceive on its real scale, thus placing it in a critical relationship with the weird suburban domesticity of the surroundings.

The creation of a lively garden in the small external surfaces left free from the building, together with the use of a special Vicenza limestone for all the horizontal surfaces in contact with the plaster, contribute to reinforcing the idea of an “erratic rock” drowned in a typical suburban urbanization.