It was the late 1990s, and after years of cool and rainy summers in their native Germany—and a health scare—Barbara and Andreas Reuss decided they needed more sun. “I didn’t know how long I would live, so I wanted to fulfill my dream to have a house in the south," says Barbara.

In 1998, the couple, now both retired lawyers, purchased a home in the small village of Tronzano, Italy, above Lake Maggiore. There, they spent summers enjoying the outdoors, taking long hikes, and swimming in the lake. Soon, Barbara’s health improved. Their two-bedroom house, named Casa Arturo, after their youngest grandson, was “our little holiday paradise,” says Barbara. That paradise came with an interesting view: a ruin of abandoned stables less than 100 feet away. Year after year, the couple watched as it fell “further into disrepair,” says Andreas, with the roof caving in, gaping holes for doors and windows, and old stones piling up along its sides.

In 2011, the couple learned that these ruins, which sit on protected land, would be subject to a new land use plan. “It included a regulation allowing old rustici close to the village to be rebuilt, even within the protected landscape area,” says Andreas. “We feared someone else might buy up the properties and develop them. So, we decided to do it ourselves.” Rehabbing the ruins into two separate, but connected, homes would give he and Barbara more space than they had at Casa Arturo, which would make it easier to host friends and family.

The land around the ruins the couple wanted to purchase included four separate plots with more than a dozen owners, so it took six years to persuade everyone to sell, and an additional two years to obtain a building permit. Fortunately, finding an architect was much easier. They tapped their son Mecky Reuss, of the Mexico City-based firm Pedro y Juana, and firm codirector Ana Paula Ruiz Galindo, for the project.

To start, it was important to Barbara and Andreas to preserve the rustic character of the building, which had become not only a part of the landscape, but a recognizable landmark on a popular walking route out of town. (The ruins are only accessible by an ancient Roman cobblestone road.) “You can only reach these houses by foot,” says Ruiz Galindo. “A lot of people go up there on the weekends. And when I say a lot, I mean like five people, because the town is not very big.”

There were also preservation rules to adhere to. The architects had to maintain the existing footprint of the buildings, although they were allowed to grow the square footage by up to 30 percent. Also, the roof could not exceed a certain height, and the exterior stone had to be kept.

The ruins were previously massed in two volumes, which was a natural fit for Barbara and Andreas’s need for two separate houses. “Over the years our family had grown, and the two bedrooms in Casa Arturo were barely enough for us and the three grandchildren, let alone for additional family members,” says Andreas. The architects kept the rectangular shape of the buildings, but enlarged them and added a well-defined break that forms a passage between, and allows for the stair access to Casa B. The break denotes the two separate houses as well as a material transition from outside to in.

The primary design challenge for the architects was to contemporize the chunky stone on the walls and roof while following preservation constraints, which was accomplished by tweaking the roof lines. “We played along with the different rules,” says Ruiz Galindo. “You think about what your constraints are, and then you try to move around and push at the edges.”

An asymmetrical roof shape complies with height requirements, and is also a way to “tame the weight of the stone,” says Reuss, with a ridge that looks like it’s shifted off-center and thick fascia and eaves underscoring the edges. The roof is “sort of like a hat that’s sitting to the side,” says Reuss. The rear building reverses the roof treatment, so “it looks like the house on the back is trying to look over the front,” says Ruiz Galindo. Cor-Ten steel accents like gutters and downpipes provide crisp borders for the rugged stone.

The walls were rebuilt with insulated blocks—“They are kind-of like Legos,” says Reuss—then finished on the exterior with stone salvaged from the ruins. The body of the houses are wrapped in a thin horizontal reveal to further “break up the volume,” says Ruiz Galindo, and mark the interior floors. Square windows pierce the stone with “concrete frames that pop out of the wall,” says Reuss, in order to give the windows definition and contrast. “The moment that you put an opening into the structure, it starts to disintegrate the dry stone wall, which is super beautiful,” says Reuss. “So, we worked a long time to puncture the facade with openings as small as possible,” in order to maintain much of the stone surface while still conveying views.

Inside, the architects’ sense of play becomes more apparent. “We had to put some color into it because our work is very colorful and fun,” says Ruiz Galindo. “In the interiors, you can see that play out.” Casa A reveals cheery yellows, including the tiled bathroom and the kitchen counter, while blue tones prevail in Casa B, where Andreas and Barbara now reside, having since sold Casa Arturo.

Not that Barbara and Andreas are inside much. With their new home, called Le Stalle, which is Italian for “stables,” as a base, the couple are still typically found engaging in their favorite past times, hiking in the mountains or taking a boat out on Lake Maggiore. After a day outside, they recoup on the terrace off the kitchen, surrounded by the smells of the garden and taking in a view of the Alps and the occasional neighbor walking by.

“We live mostly outside here,” says Andreas. “Together with the wild pigs and the deer roaming. It is splendid isolation.”

Related Reading:

She Built a Surprising Home in the Shell of an Old Belgian Barn

18 Brilliant Barn Conversions That Merge Past and Present

Project Credits:

Architect of Record: Pedro y Juana / @pedroyjuana

Architect of Record: Studio Catenazzi

Builder: Studio Catenazzi

Landscape Design: Azienda Agricola, Luiggi Galbiati,Castelveccana

Lighting Design: Luce Luce

Doors, Windows, Walls, and Closets: Falegnameria Catenazzi

Kitchens: Arredamenti Gobetti

Bathroom Furniture: Idromarket Laveno

Photography: Gaia Cambiaggi Anna Positano | Studio Campo