Type of project
Residential Building
Year
2017 – in progress
Tag
Housing Plaster Geometry Repoussage and Chasing Landscape
Photographers
Michele Razzi
Status
In progress
Location
Siena, Italy
The project involved the construction of two buildings containing 12 apartments each, horizontally staggered and vertically offset, set down within the orography of the area, configured as two monolithic masses sculpted according to a series of faces and inclined planes.
Two rocks in a sea of green.
Each building consists of a basement and two floors above ground. The basement level is designated for parking spaces, cellars, and equipment rooms for the whole block. The two floors above ground are intended for residential use. An internal staircase directly connects the parking spaces with the apartments above. Pedestrian pathways in front of the buildings provide access to the apartments, leading to the stairwell in correspondence with the difference in angle of the façade towards another incline. Each slat slants downwards about 70 cm in correspondence with the stairwell to accommodate the natural morphology of the ground, as a result of which the openings in the façade vary in height according to the set height of each individual module. The same process used on the intrados tends to inspire that sensation of a sculpted mass that we sought to achieve.
The system of openings in the façade serves to break up the apparent rigidity of the volumes.
These windows, elements alternatively created by extrusion and subtraction, much bigger than required by the minimum ventilation-lighting requirements, are nothing more than the frame of already existing natural paintings.
Two hues were selected to compose the building’s colour palette: Sienna and Burnt Sienna.
The roof is arranged in a system of pitches, peaks, and variable eave lines, giving the roof the same sculptural quality that is found throughout the rest of the building.
