The houses of the future by architects and designers appear in Rome

The historic center of Rome is not the first place one would think of to look for the possible futures of architecture and living. Yet, since 2022, every summer the sixteenth-century gardens of Villa Medici have hosted a tangible reflection on these themes. Home to the French Academy since 1803, Villa Medici is one of the main landmarks of Roman cultural life and a direct bridge to French artistic and design research. This past May 20th, it inaugurated the fifth edition of the Festival des Cabanes: a laboratory for architectural experimentation that scatters a series of "cabins" throughout the gardens, tasking architects, designers, landscape architects, and students with imagining what living tomorrow might mean.

Open to visitors until September 28th, the five Cabanes dialogue with the facade designed by Bartolomeo Ammannati and with the plant species—some of them centuries-old—of the villa’s Italianate gardens. The festival operates precisely on this tension: that between the futuristic and the existing, between the new and the historical heritage, between open spaces and minimal architecture. The temporary structures are made of wood, metal, bricks, and reclaimed materials, transforming the garden into a landscape of experimental micro-architectures. The projects are designed by the Brussels-based studio Bento Architecture; the Fondation Huttopia with designers Camille Blanc and Julien Schurmann; the students of NABA (Nuova Accademia di Belle Arti); ECAL (École cantonale d’art de Lausanne) together with Mutina and designer Ronan Bouroullec; and finally, the studios Prìa, Velia, and salazarsequeromedina.

Bento Architecture reinterprets Roman sacred architecture through a filiform structure supporting a suspended dome. An element normally associated with monumentality is here transformed into a light shelter, traversed by natural light and rain filtering through the central oculus. Creetopia, the project coordinated by Fondation Huttopia - a company born in Lyon from an idea of camping linked to the relationship with nature - is instead inspired by the culture of the Cree people and imagines a form of nomadic architecture for contemporary tourism. The structure reflects on the extreme climatic conditions of northern Canada and possible strategies for environmental resilience.

Present at the festival for the first time, Naba is working instead on reuse. Students deconstructed one of last year's huts, Hut 7L designed by MBL Architectes, transforming it into a new seating system and demonstrating how even temporary architecture can generate further life cycles. Facade, the installation signed by Ecal, Mutina and Ronan Bouroullec, is perhaps the most ambiguous project of the edition. Apparently it is just a two-dimensional facade, but the trompe-l'œil and shadow work transform the surface into a changing space, where perception changes throughout the day along with the light and ceramic texture designed by Mutina.

Prìa and Velia, on the other hand, designed Aquifère, a Cabane that exploits the ability of travertine and porous ceramics to absorb and release water. Inserted among the orange trees in the garden, the structure experiments with a passive urban cooling system that works together with shade and natural ventilation. The salazarsequeromedina team finally imagined a reading pavilion inspired by the Villa Medici's Chamber of the Birds, a famous frescoed environment in which the aviary decoration functions as a true spatial device. Their Cabane 7 echoes that logic through a contemporary pergola, light and permeable, designed as a place of rest and contemplation.

The same studio also signs the temporary bookstore set up in the building's atrium together with La Librairie 7L, founded in 1999 by Karl Lagerfeld in Paris and acquired by Chanel in 2021, which for the festival offers a selection of volumes dedicated to the themes of architecture, landscape and contemporary living.

Opening image: ECAL/Ecole cantonale d'art de Lausanne with Ronan Bouroullec and Mutina, Facade, Festival des Cabanes 2026. Photo Daniele Molajoli