An Angular Copper-Clad Apartment Building in Italy

For a six-unit residential building in Italy’s northeast, architecture and design firm Plasma Studio took a decidedly contemporary approach to the regional vernacular. The color palette of existing houses in the area informed the choice of materials—blonde larch wood and dark gray pre-oxidized copper—and building codes mandated a pitched roof, but the structure boasts a highly geometric form (the firm’s signature move), courtesy of balconies that jut from the facade, echoing the roof’s slope. In profile, the domicile has the prototypical gable, but from all other angles it takes on the look of abstracted folding planes that express the steep site, says architect Ulla Hell of Plasma Studio.