10 Italian architectures that can only be viewed from the water

We have selected ten spectacular works overlooking the water and often visible mainly from the water, among plays of reflections, privileged perspectives and an “elective” dialogue with the landscape.

If the villa outside the city, from Roman times to today, shows a desire for “otium” philologically understood as time reclaimed from the hustle and bustle and daily worries for the benefit of higher needs of being (from the prosaic to the intellectual), it is no coincidence that many architectures of this type were built in landscape-relevant contexts, where contact with nature and pleasant climatic conditions can often act as effective medicines for both the body and the spirit. These include the villas at the lake and the sea, where water acquires a symbolic as well as therapeutic role, as Italo Calvino (Invisible Cities) well knew suggesting, through the specular city of Valdrada facing its own image reflected on the lake, that reality is often more complex than it appears, and that perhaps different perspectives are necessary to grasp it in its entirety.

This is the case of those constructions where the complexity of the work is captured mainly from privileged perspectives and, in particular, from the water, revealing the designer’s intent to trigger a biunivocal and “elective” dialogue between artifice and natural element, in spite of the surrounding world. From villas with gardens overflowing into the water, blurring the boundaries between architecture and nature, to works set in the landscape and overlooking the coast, as if to embrace the infinity of the panorama, Domus has selected ten spectacular works on the water and visible from the water, among plays of reflections and privileged views, in a (perhaps) “cathartic” journey through architecture and its “double”.

Opening image: Alberto Ponis, Casa Scalesciani, Costa Paradiso, Sardinia 1977. From Domus 990, April 2015

Villa Pizzo, Cernobbio, Como 1532 Photo Riccardo Ortelli from Wikipedia

Villa Pizzo, built on a rocky cliff outcrop between Cernobbio and Moltrasio, is fully visible only from the lake. The architecture is characterized by simple and linear squared volumes, rhythmic distribution of floors, and sober decorations on the facade. The garden, which extends at the level of the two main buildings, the main villa and a building further to the east, is arranged Italian-style, with paths running among flower beds, hedges and Baroque fountains. The private villa is open to the public for tours and events.

Villa del Balbianello, Lenno, Como 1785 Photo Yelkrokoyade from Wipipedia

Villa del Balbianello, one of the most fascinating villas around Lake Como, is built on a peninsula directly overlooking the lakeshore. Now managed by FAI (Fondo Ambiente Italiano), the villa, with its terraced garden and spectacular views of the lake and surrounding mountains, is a masterpiece of balance between natural and man-made landscape and a highly -desirable film set.

Bernard Rudofsky and Luigi Cosenza, Villa Oro, Posillipo, Naples 1937 Domus 624, December 1982

Built on the tuffaceous coast of Posillipo, Villa Oro is counted among the finest examples of modernism in Italy. The work is characterised by the balanced interplay between the building and the landscape, the sharp and clear articulation of volumes, the interpenetration of interior and exterior spaces, and the elegant constructive, detailing and furnishing solutions.

Adalberto Libera, Malaparte House, Capri 1943 Photo romanple from Adobe Stock

The solitary house that Adalberto Libera designed for Curzio Malaparte is a brilliant example of how rationalist architecture can harmoniously deal with the landscape. The rigorous parallelepiped, Pompeian red in colour, emerges vigorously from the rugged rock of Punta Massullo. The staircase that seems to lead up to the sky makes the roof an open-air room overlooking the sea.

Giulio Minoletti, Casa di fine settimana per uno scapolo, Fiumelatte, Varenna, Lecco 1945 Domus 973, October 2013

The small building stands on a bank of black Varenna stone overlooking the lake, taking shape from the narrow space between the water and the provincial road, carved into the upstream slope. The rectangular layout is functional and flexible. Particular attention is paid to its integration into the landscape, through the compact and sober volumes and the choice of cladding materials (local stone) that weave a delicate dialogue with the context.

Vittoriano Viganò, Casa per un Artista “La Scala”, lago di Garda 1959 Domus n. 351, Milan 1959

In the Portese area, in a natural landscape dotted with olive trees and meadows, the villa, cantilevering over the slope of Baia del Vento for more than half of its surface area, leans toward the landscape as if to embrace it. Two bare horizontal cement floors for the upper and lower slabs enclose fluid, unified rooms enclosed by vast glass surfaces, blurring the boundary between interior and exterior.

Marco Zanuso, Casa Arzale, Arzachena, Sassari 1964 Photo Stefano Ferrando - studio Vetroblu; within "L’Italia raccontata attraverso l’architettura" project, funded by Direzione Generale Creatività Contemporanea

In a landscape of rocks sinking into the sea, Mediterranean vegetation and dry-stone walls, Zanuso designed two “twin” holiday homes for two families. The houses form a Greek-cross layout, the centre of which is a patio covered by a pergola of wood and reeds, and the wings are the living quarters. The small architectures with their composed and severe character, in blocks of granite, evoke the spontaneous buildings of the region.

Ferdinando Fagnola, Ville, Portisco 1970; ristrutturazione Ferdinando Fagnola e PAT. Architetti associati (2018) Photo Pino dell’Aquila

Skinny exposed concrete volumes partially underground and embedded in the landscape like geological remains attacked by vegetation, clearly visible only from the sea: this is how the five villas that were meant to literally disappear into the landscape of the Costa Smeralda were conceived. Of the five, only one was finished according to the original plan and the others heavily altered. The recent renovation, by Ferdinando Fagnola (the architect who originally designed the work) and PAT. Architetti associati, has made it possible to recover three of the five villas according to the original spirit, through a new spatial organisation, new volumes and the technological retrofitting of the complex.

Cini Boeri, Casa Bunker, Loc. Abbatoggia, La Maddalena, Sassari 1967 Photo Gabriele Basilico@, 1973

The house, located in the most exposed position of the open gulf towards Corsica, rests on an irregularly sloping rocky terrain. The massive, introverted reinforced concrete shell, reminiscent of a bunker, opens out into a central courtyard that serves as the epicentre of domestic life, around which the private rooms are arranged, and opens out with a patio towards the sea.

Alberto Ponis, Casa Scalesciani, Costa Paradiso, Sardinia 1977 Domus 990, April 2015

Among the many houses designed by Ponis in Sardinia, Casa Scalesciani is a manifesto of his lexicon that is always attentive to converting the built work into an a-temporal artefact as if it had always belonged to the natural context in which it is located. The house is set in a steep terrain jutting out towards the sea, following its contours. The elongated, meandering plan and the volume embedded in the ground fade into the context, making only the roof of the building visible from the sea and the land.