The force that guides the design is similar to that of the diviner who follows the vibrations of a place to find water. The identification of a genius loci, of a character of “place”, intended as interaction between place and identify, always guides the projects of the Studio.
The brief was to project a context - both itself a natural environment or “artefact” as well as a socio-cultural “model” - in an architectural organism able to generate simultaneous places, points of observation and not just objects to observe. The design approach applied to all the projects is one of conceiving devices that can establish a dialogue.
The house designed at Massa, Ligure-Apuana territory within the administrative confines of Tuscany, faces the hills of “Candia”, the outlines of which are characterised by the vineyards that form a chain of roughly 5 km along the line of the coast. The surface of the hills is carved out in trapezoid-shaped sections that correspond to the plots and the regulation of the water.
The view of this profiled earth-architecture is particularly evocative of this area. The dialogue with place occurs via a design matrix structured on two factors: a geometric factor - the geometry of the sectors - becomes a compositional vocabulary of the architectural object; a geographical or position-related factor, limits the project to be strongly that seen on the hills.
A third factor is to do with a way of interpreting human relationships in an architecture conceived as a “domestic theatre”, a kind of scenic space in which simultaneous actions are carried out, outlined by a scaled “dramatic composition” . This materialises though a way of structuring the spaces in such a way as to make multiple interpretations possible: a psycho-functionalist machine à habiter.
The house is designed by assembling volumes (sectors) on surfaces of contact. In height, the logic of the connection of the topographic levels determines the form of the volumes, that are composed in such a way as to create a layout whose fulcrum is the terrace at first floor.
This, with the completely free east/west views, makes for an elevational layout supported by the volume of the chimney on the south and the master bedroom at the north. The terrace frames the hills opposite with an elevation shaped by the inclinations of the walls and the pitch of the roof, in an attempt to make the environmental situation “hyper-real”. Alberto Poggi
A single-family-house facing the hills, Massa
Architect: Alberto Poggi
Client: Bertozzi Silvia, Pallucca Angelo
Building contractor: Teknoedil srl
Built area: 150 mq
Total area: 1000 mq
Timescale: 2005-2007
