house#02
House#02 was born from the restructuring of an apartment of around 100 sq.m. for a young couple in the south east zone of Milan and just a short distance from the Prada Foundation.
The trust, the foresight of the commission in following step by step the architect’s work and the mutual respect are elements, which were key to the definition of this project characterized by a high level of personal input.
The house, built at the tail end of the 1960s, identifies the classic distribution of central corridors and the disengagement of all the other rooms, where it was decided to keep and add its worth to this principal element of the project.
In this visual of the central distributive spine, the corridor was enlarged and the hollow of the doors brought back on the inside compartment of the same depth, aligning them to the internal thread of each environment when the doors are closed and placed in the thickness of the compartment when opened.
This expedient generates a sense of extreme three-dimensionality and successive space, amplifying the concept of a portal entrance to each room. This concept is further emphasized also by way of a spotlight that fills up all the compartments with its light.
The existing niches, by virtue of the univocal project logic, have become the impulse upon which numerous elements made for measure can be obtained, minutely pondered, including the kitchen, the shower and the cupboards in the rooms.
The choice of the material has been guided by a simple and clear idea: the use of neutral tints, with a grey base on the walls and pavements and thus permitting the resetting of the casing on the visual impact level, with the scope of making the furnishing elements key protagonists and the doors furnished with a selection of veneered striped elm, thus contrasting with other black and white elements of fixed proper furnishing.
The doors, whose designs are inspired by drilled elements of the Prouvè prefabrication, were fulfilled with a double wooden panel interposed with opal glass.
The heightened thickness of the door – almost 60 millimetres – confers a particularly deepened depth on the flowers, impeding, on one side, the sight of the inside of the rooms but permitting the light at the same time to filter and silhouette the inside of the door compartments.
The wood of the kitchen and table, with its thickness reduced counterparts efficiently to that of the doors even if of the same essence resulting in, at the same time, thin and unusual as regards traditional concepts in the usage of this type of natural material.
