A simple house

Authors’ Comment

The presented project consists in an individual home inserted in a continuous transformation context, in a mottled environment, characterized by a blend of urban rules, shapes and colors, specific to the peripheral development of the fancy part of the city, in an area that aspires to the fashionable crowd of the city recently characterized by the slum wannabes, dynamic, full of opportunities and challenges.
Integrated into this urban diversity specific to the world of the recently developed city, the project proposes a simple volume, with a ground floor respecting the outline of the preexisting carriage house, on top of which a cantilevered floor is added, offset, as a parallel to the blind wall of the neighboring house.
Almost underestimating the opportunity of the investment, being built with a level below the permitted height regime and not making the most of the capacity of land use, the project recovers to the limit, deliberately occupying almost the entire courtyard, in the shadow of the floor and at the limit of the old walnut tree, including it in extremis.
Oriental and oriented to the gaze of curious passers-by, the ground floor terrace is almost an open-air, covered room, a place for good morning and the evening paper reading before sunset.
The road to the access way is slightly diverted, as if deviating, without disturbing the tranquility of the shadow of the terrace. Covered, the path to the entrance is interrupted in bad weather by cold raindrops falling between two walls of an upstairs outdoor space. In a hurry, but stopping just for a moment near the window of the living area, the reflection of the old walnut tree catches our attention, thus traveling almost the entire length to the back yard.
Looking inside through the large window on the ground floor, we seem to perceive a succession of superimposed planes, a transparency towards the blind wall, a bright space of the living area on double height, scenographic and agitated, with all kinds of diagonals, the internal staircase being a contradictory and yet stable item, simultaneously affirming and contradicting the space depth.
Passing by, almost unnoticed, the inner courtyard is more of an artifice for the light reflected by sticking to the wall of the neighboring house and a pretext for volumetric detachment.
Crossing the house among stories and different spatial instances, the diversity of perspectives are similar to a box office movie trailer. Looking from the living area towards the terrace, the kitchen and dining area are almost an afterthought, a space in a parallel world while also participating in the spacial whole.
What remains... beyond the arduous crossing of the space around and under the house, passing through its interior towards a floor composed of small rooms, just for sleeping, with two hidden terraces looking over the courtyard of light, and that's all… the last impression of a square, rectangular cutout in the double-height wall of the living area, the gaze passing further through an outer wall, as if repetitive, with zoom – a painting, a photo lens towards the landscape, i.e. the walnut tree that was not the point of start, but it is the final one.
A simple, white house, covered in the traditional hundred years old way terrace, as if it were the search for innovation without innovating, a house that can be browsed either in black and white images, in color or both, quickly reading the pages of a newspaper, exchanging a word with the neighbors or lingering on the terrace, overlooking the street, as if no longer needing the house and all the constructive effort, promenade and spatial effects, bustle of lights and structural efforts. A color night image and a glimpse of the city's noise, fading into the sunset.