SOLID SPACE
We are in the historic centre of Vicenza. The project is the renovation of a 1904 building, part of an older ‘contrà’ parallel to the medieval walls. The building curtain of Via San Rocco is separated from the fortifications by gardens that have been variously occupied with buildings over the centuries.
The house consists of two bodies forming an ‘L’ whose long side, the ‘manica’, protrudes towards the ancient walls.
The main façade is to the east. At the end of the perspective of the street opposite.
This short, urban and elegant façade conceals a larger, domestic building, sheltered from the street, with a large garden.
The project idea is a work on space; first that which is freed, unified and made manifest of the original envelope, then populated with minute and ‘dense’ volumes arranged three-dimensionally.
The project is simultaneously a work on the expressiveness of the rediscovered void and on the minimal composition of a few ideal ‘bricks’ (housing the service areas) with which to populate the space.
When the project began, the property was divided into several flats, with the main residence on the first floor.
The oldest body (to the east, on the street) housed the living room, dining room and kitchen. The sleeping area of the residence was in the sleeve, the rooms to the north connected to each other and to the main body by a long corridor facing south, with a continuous terrace towards the brightest part of the garden.
The rooms, although airy, left large spaces in the attics concealed. The project has freed these large ‘sleeping’ volumes by demolishing the false ceilings.
The space unified with the demolition of the internal partitions was then occupied with small ‘solid’ volumes enclosing the services, storage rooms, and greenhouse. These simple volumes are arranged at different heights, free, tangent or overlapping each other to articulate the main rooms.
The project area is thus greatly increased without any external volumetric addition.
The roofs have been reconstructed and insulated highlighting the structural texture, alternating in a smooth regular warp of beams and wooden panels.
Solid spaces populate the project not only in its interior, two volumes reveal themselves on the outside; a bioclimatic greenhouse to the south-east and a pergola above the terrace to the south-west are constructed clues to this process of spatial occupation.
