Casa Venegono

Barozzi + Riva designs two-family house in a wood near Varese, Italy, that projects into the vegetation, with which they share the cladding and that enters into white interiors lit by large windows.

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Building in a wood of conifers and broad-leafed trees while preserving the natural environment; constructing on a slanting plane without violating the orography; and developing two separate houses with a shared entrance.

These are the three principles behind Stefano Riva and Marco and Massimo Bigozzi’s design for two private houses in the woods near Varese.

The site sits in a residential fabric of eclectic buildings with parks and gardens; and the area features a strong presence of nature and an orography descending in a gradient from east to west. The whole programme was shaped by these conditions.

The surroundings are extremely expressive both spatially and naturally thanks to tall-trunk trees that vary the intensity of the light, aspects taken into consideration as points of local contact and dialogue.

Higher up, the entrance zone contains a base on which the two houses develop, projected into the woods, specularly: the ground floor containing the communal areas (living room and kitchen) with the sleeping zones on the other floors.

The “suspended house” to the north is constructed around a hanging patio that unites the outdoor space and the two inhabited zones (social and private); the “house on pillars”, a suspended volume immersed in the vegetation, generates a space below from which a ramp connects land and sky, the social space with the more private zone.