Credits
From Barreca & La Varra
A domestic oasis, in the center of the city, where the interiors are in spatial and material continuity with the garden.
The project organizes the rooms of the house on three floors: the living area is on the ground floor in direct connection with the outside, the sleeping area is located on the upper floor and the service areas are in the basement.
The facade of the villa looks like a screen, an interactive device that can be modified and opened completely to the private outdoor space, or closed to shield the interiors, using a system of dark gray roller blinds. From a stylistic point of view, it was decided to use similar materials for the garden, the facade and interiors of the villa in order to give a homogeneous image to the whole project. The architectural and material choices guarantee continuity between the garden and the building, which are in close symbiosis.
The facade and its overhangs are coated in victory green serpentine marble, particularly suitable for further emphasizing the harmony between the building and the garden. Visual and spatial continuity is guaranteed on the façade by the six large windows, made with dark gray panoramic sliding doors, with retractable frame that is practically invisible as it is hidden inside the slab. The windows guarantee excellent energy comfort, with a perfect balance between transmittance and reflectance. The choice of using the same floor both inside and outside, with continuous joints, further emphasizes the relationship between inside and outside.
The access to the villa is from the condominium garden, which through a door covered in dark gray porcelain stoneware leads to the private garden. The garden is divided into a “plant” part with a pool of water and pre-existing trees raised on an upper level, and a “hard” paved part that represents the outdoor living room, which continues inside the ground floor of the villa. A large open space on ground floor opens the kitchen, the living room, the dining room and a guest bathroom to the outdoor area. The stairs lead to the upper floor, where a corridor distributes the two single bedrooms, each with a bathroom, and the master bedroom with a walk-in closet and two separate bathrooms, which can be accessed from both the bedroom and the walk-in closet, which both than lead to the shower area. The stairs leads to the basement where are located the toilets, the laundry and covered outdoor parking spaces. The domestic space is characterized by precious materials but with sober tones. The only purely decorative elements are in the bathrooms: floral wallpaper in the guest ones, pop art themed tiles in the children’s bathrooms, and black ceramic with gold motifs in the master. The staircase is a channel of natural light thanks to the skylight above; it has a glass parapet and a luminous groove separating it from the side wall. Niches carved into the wall covered in stoneware enclose some works of art.
The furniture is designed by the Barreca & La Varra studio: from the wood paneling in the living room, to the bedroom furnishings, to the kitchens (the service one in shades of gray, also open to the garden through a large window, to the island open on the living room). The house is equipped with an integrated home automation system, and has photovoltaic panels on the roof.
The new layout of the garden maintains the original shape and shape with a side entrance, along the boundary wall, which leads from the entrance level to the lower one, where is located the entrance to the villa. To ensure a larger green lawn area, it was decided to eliminate the existing internal paths and concentrate the most domestic part of the park, that is the paved one, directly in contact with the villa. The flooring is in dark gray porcelain stoneware slabs in the part facing the building while the entire remaining part of the garden is treated as a lawn.