Family house in Beuzi - Italy
The history of this house is made of tenacity and pride. These are the feelings that led the first generation of a family of farmers to build their own livestock farm in a land consisting of an anthropic embankment and the second generation to want to redevelop the area to build their own house next to that of their parents.
Before the redevelopment, the site looked like a large concrete platform on which stood, in a disorderly manner, abandoned warehouses covered with asbestos slabs. From the retaining wall to the south to the driveway, the land was uncultivated. It could be read as an alteration of the landscape context and created a real fragmentation of the natural system of greenery with a significant modification of the orographic characters.
An unacceptable situation. The project sought to re-establish a balance point between natural, artificial green and settlement. Demolish the existing buildings to make an environmental redemption and return to the natural context most of the surfaces occupied by the abandoned warehouses, carry out the necessary reclamation and replace the large existing volume following the model of housing units available in the neighboring agricultural context: the single-family house .
Overall, it is the landscape context that determines spaces and uses of the natural and built land.
Approaching the home it takes on an ever greater degree of artificialization. It starts from the existing Mediterranean scrub, passing through the open air crops, olive groves and orchards, a garden of aromatic herbs at the service of the residence, and a green “filter” area with planting of vines to cover the existing walls and the construction of new ones terraces that mitigate the changes in altitude and allow the planting of new trees. We calculated that the project involved the re-naturalization of 87% of the surfaces and the reconstruction of only 25% of the existing volumes.
The design of the house is deliberately simple and complies with the typological characteristics of the buildings in the context. The building has only one floor and seeks a docile relationship with the landscape through a body of the building that develops through an alternation of more or less deep volumes. At the entrance, the volume thins and is crossed by passing paths, becomes transparent to give permeability to the landscape and moves back from the roof to make way for covered spaces for mediation. The living spaces are brought back to the unit by the roof that recomposes the volumes without interrupting the constant dialogue between inside and outside.
Every detail is reduced and deliberately whispered, sometimes it allows for subtle licenses, the retaining walls made with metal gabions filled with stones found on site or the realization of the visual continuity between the reinforced concrete external face and the internal wooden false ceiling, possible thanks to the wisdom of the craftsmen who worked on the construction site.
