Riviera 107
The project is located in a portion of the city that clearly speaks of this tumultuous growth: some surviving Art Nouveau or neoclassical
villas are flanked by imposing buildings, often lacking in quality. Some villas, through the years, were quickly replaced by the rampant palazzina (apartment building) type. A single block typology, served by a central vertical distribution around which the apartments - two or more per floor - are arranged. This is the context in which Vaccarini’s project is located.
Riviera 107 reinterprets this typology, arranging distribution in the building according to functional bands. The front band of the apartment, the one most open to the public domain, is thus opposite to the service band, which includes the vertical distribution, bathrooms, kitchens, laundries, and further back the more private quarters with bedrooms and studios. Following this logic, the building further develops its dialogue with the surrounding environment. The front of the building is set back from the street edge, and thus defines a semi-public space of mediation between the public and the private spaces. A kind of sidewalk expansion that the building shares with the city. The hallway becomes the collective place par excellence, flanked by a communal space for meetings, parties all those common activities that may be necessary in a condominium.
More than anything else, this distribution layout allowed an original transformation of the seafront overlook. The east-facing facade, in fact, is conceived as a real open section of the building, along which the floors of the building cantilever. The compact volume is thus dissolved in a way and the floor plates “slip” outwards. The shifting of the planes and the cantilevers that jut out towards the sea define a portion of open-air dwelling, a sort of trabocco urbano, explains Giovanni Vaccarini, referring to the traditional trabocchi - wooden structures for fishing that characterize the local coastline. This choice allows the interiors to attain a direct and unconditional relationship with the sea view. An intense relationship with the city and the landscape, with light and outdoor life, is at the heart of the project. The main rooms of the apartments enjoy direct views and all have outdoor terraces, designed as real open-air rooms, an integral part of domestic life.
The soffit of the cantilevered balconies is made of a perforated brass cladding. Seen from below, as one walks along the promenade, the series of reflective overhangs gives rise to a sort of unprecedented fifth elevation of the building that helps to define the urban scene.
