Type of project
Private Residence
Year
2003
Tag
Stairs Corten Steel Cement Geometry Restoration
Photographers
Paola De Pietri
Status
Completed
Location
Siena, Italy
Homes within important historical centres are often the product of a series of properties developed over time, grouped together and inconsistently restructured for the inhabitant’s subsequent needs.
The apartment presented here follows this rule, and is organised on three levels consisting of a basement-level warehouse and two residential floors with direct access to the main street.
The project’s objective was to reconnect the three levels with a bridging element that fulfilled all the functional requirements and, at the same time, gave the project a unique character.
This is why we inserted a truncated-conical helical staircase-sculpture that weaves the three levels together, offering evocative perspectives and providing rest areas from which to admire the verticality of the rooms.
An opportunity presented itself to increase the underground space to include two tuff rock cellars and a cistern, used for the collection of rainwater, that was seven metres deep and lined with rare curved bricks, after they were discovered during the course of the structural work on the ground floor.
At this point, we decided to make the axis of the newly built staircase coincide with the centre of the circumference of the base of the cylinder, evoking the appearance of a piston and cylinder, as if the truncated cone fitted exactly into the tank.
Constructed from a single material, cor-ten steel, the staircase is reminiscent of Tatlin’s famous monument.
