| Villa T by Architrend Architecture Posted: 18 Jan 2012 08:49 AM PST Architrend Architecture designed the Villa T in Ragusa, Sicily. 
. Description from the architects: The context is agricultural, a plateau with sandstone walls to divide the various portions of property. Once marked by the productive outposts of the "masserie", farms with cultivated fields and cattle, today the Ibleo territory has changed its look. Instead of scattered farmhouses, isolated and divided by farmlands, construction has gradually filled spaces, erasing the network of isolated architectural complexes gathered around courtyards, like 'pacific forts'. Nevertheless, the site of this project has partially conserved that precious idea of 'isolation', and the whole design comes to grips with this context, constructing a direct relationship with the landscape, faced openly on two sides, while emerging from it thanks to an eloquent contemporary design. The program of the compositional process is that of a large single-family house, alone at the center of a meadow, bordered by the free, linear horizon of the plateau. Here, in the midst of the grassy terrain, treated as virgin land for construction, the architecture stands out clearly as a complete entity with definite limits. But its borders are not 'introverted', they are open to visual enjoyment of the outside world, through the creation of outdoor living spaces, rooms without walls that become parts of the overall solution. The relationship with the context and the sequence of the three stacked floors relies on a sort of continuous architectural ribbon that reinterprets the flavor of the Mediterranean home, developing, bending to form rooms and the roof, outdoor zones raised from the meadow like platforms, porticos and overhangs, balconies and terraces. A solid facade clad in stone, to the north, is flanked by the harmonious antithesis of the southern and eastern facades, fully glazed and open to the greenery. They reveal the two-storey height of the living area, with the mono-beam staircase leading to the first floor, containing a studio zone and a bedroom. The daytime area is joined to the kitchen, located in the lower volume, while the luminous living and dining area emphasizes the double height of the construction, with its large pitched roof. The master bedroom zone with bath and closet is located behind the living area. The sequence living-dining-kitchen encounters two outdoor spaces: on one side, facing the living room, a terrace at ground level connects to a recessed patio faced by the underground spaces, with two bedrooms and a den, shaded for cool comfort. Behind the kitchen, connected by a full-height glazing, an external portico is like a room without walls, open to the surrounding lawn. The white stucco and stone facings that wrap the forceful geometric design, highlighted by a red floor marker that interrupts the high corner glazing, the planes that combine, in a dynamic way, around the sloping roof, reveal the pursuit of a 'possible Mediterranean style' that pays attention to local history, but without copying, ready for experimentation with new possibilities.                           Visit the Architrend Architecture website – here. Photography by Umberto Agnello . .  |
| Villa GM by Architrend Architecture Posted: 18 Jan 2012 06:19 AM PST Architrend Architecture designed the Villa GM in Marina di Ragusa, Sicily. 
. Description from the architects: This villa, like a garden pavilion hung with a spectacular view of the sea, is part of a complex of houses located in Marina di Ragusa, the seafaring village of Ragusa, on a plot of land with beautiful views overlooking the Mediterranean and a stretch of coast in the direction of the island of Malta, distant about sixty miles off, and that in a bright day you can see clearly. The design of the villa derives from the influence exercised by the program of the Case Study Houses (CSH) implemented in the ’50s by John Entenza and the magazine he founded “Art & Architecture”. The house is more representative of the program is certainly the case study houses of Pierre Koenig’s Stahl House, masterfully photographed by Julius Shulman, became an icon of American lifestyle in the famous photo of the living room of the house with the background on the amazing night view of Los Angeles. The position of the batch of the project and the cultural similarities with that program became the essence of contemporary absolutely present after more than fifty years, has determined the main choices that affect the architecture of the house. The villa has an L-shaped ground plan shape, is set around a large swimming pool with sun terrace paved with planks of larch treated with a white primer. The continuity of the interior of the living room and is secured by a glass wall that continues to spread around the perimeter of the house facing the sea view. Compared to the garden the house is almost suspended, because a continuous and smooth edge, detached from the ground, surrounds the house, determine the line of coverage, the line connects with the base, is defined by vertical sidewalls. Two walls demarcating the inlet side and the opposite border of the pool are independent of the structure and connected with it through a high window and continuous thought of as individual plates that slide, too detached from the line of soil and structure. Architecture is dry and clear, made so well by the economy of the materials used, steel and wood frame, glass for the side walls and cement floors for both internal and external. The only element of disturbance, at a scale consisting of a thin folded sheet which is held at a red carpet to mark the entrance. The garden was designed as a collection of Mediterranean plants with the edge of the sea area defined by a sinuously to the cacti, palm trees here and there are some underlying organic forms in which the white gravel of the materials are clearly delineate the Green lawns. The interiors are essential ports are designed as full-height panels of the same thickness of the partition, and then back to the wall on both the internal and the external room hallway are white lacquered opaque white as the walls the house, white as the wooden beams of the roof. The white fluid that surrounds the dimension of the interiors, white is also the kitchen island facing out to sea and pool. Gray are the seats of living a light gray shading into the white furniture and the gray cement floor. The dining table is the Saarinen Tulip, the chairs are the Series 7 by Arne Jacobsen, while the light above the table is a ball of light in glass such as the Stahl house. The charm of the Stahl house determined the character of the villa, its planimetric shape, its design philosophy with the choice of using the exposed structure. The whole house is a tribute to architect Pierre Koeing, perhaps the most brilliant architects with Craig Ellwood Americans who have given it a great contemporary American and world architecture.                      Visit the Architrend Architecture website – here. Photography by Moreno Maggi .  |
