Monticello

“Monticello”

The project in Monticello is the transformation of a rural building into a home immersed in the vineyards of the Emilian countryside, at the foot of the Parmesan Apennines.

A monolithic frame of smooth formwork concrete engages the pre-existing building, establishing a relationship with it and generating new interior/exterior spaces, so as to become - through the passage of time and seasons - an element of territorial continuity.

The new structure is composed by parallelepipeds made in situ overgrown with vegetation and padded by glass and wooden panels, while the frame structure allows to dilate and amplify the interior space, framing the surrounding landscape with different optics and perspectives.

From the inside, the spaces are pierce and welcome nature, bringing it closer to the house inhabitants. The new floors and the roof are also left in exposed reinforced concrete, while functional nuclei made of European oak furnish the spaces and hide within themselves all the facilities and the annexed functions. The perimeter brick walls of the original volume are upholstered with German fabrics of different colours, alternating - where required - Italian ceramics and quartzite from the near Val Taro river. Steel and brass, on their end, act as elements of contact, resolving joints between one material and another.

The interstitial space, the void, located between the bricks of the ancient manufacture and the new concrete frame, ideally represents the intimate relations between past, present and future, on which the house is constantly interrogating, silently lying on the ground to which it belongs.