The new one-story villa gently respects the old footprint of an old demolished two-story rural house. It is conceived as an extensive line in an open landscape overlooking the river, its presence is mostly perceived horizontally rather than volumetrically, and its footprint integrates into the natural context as a powerful act of horizontality. The roof was designed as the fifth façade of the building and it is equipped with a careful selection of solar panels and skylights in order to maximize the villa’s energetic performances.
The roof is the unifying element of all the volumes, it is designed with a balance of voids and solids that define the indoor and outdoor spaces, blending with the vegetation, letting the light filter in, and marking through its four voids the rhythm of the interior space. The first roof perforation designs like a Roman atrium the courtyard entrance to the house, and the second void provides privacy to the bedrooms and hosts two suggestive Japanese Acer trees. The third opening becomes a private patio for the master bedroom acting as an outdoor extension of the house; the fourth, almost as a cut in the roof, enlightens the corridor through a zenithal skylight.
The building is ideally divided into two functional boxes; the first box is completely stone-cladding and it hosts the service areas, the garage, and a small office. The second volume, lighter, contains the kitchen and the living room, the three en-suite bedrooms, and a dining area surrounded by wide sliding glass doors that transform the house into a terrace open to the garden. The whole building is conceived as a perforated box in which openings become small private courtyards, like domestic landscape episodes. Entering the house becomes a changing and pleasant promenade where volumes are visually connected and materials blend with vegetation.
The interior spaces are designed in order to provide the highest levels of comfort and privacy, flexibility, and visual fluidity. The suggestive suspended marble-clad fireplace strongly characterizes the living room and allows visual connection with the rooms and the patios. The outdoor porch connects the common areas of the house, and the sheet of water from the pool is a mirror for the façade, the sky, and the trees. Fluidity is enhanced by the minimalistic window frames embedded into the walls which open the house outwards blurring its limits with the landscape. Water is used as a building material cooling the environment and visually extending the built surfaces.
The project of Villa Orizzonte is narrated at all scales in a homogeneous architectural language, each and every element is shaped through the same philosophy.
Project name: Villa Orizzonte
Architects: UNICA Architects – https://unicaarchitects.com/
Location: Ferrara, Italy
Area: 785 m²
Year: 2022
Photographer: Mariela Apollonio – http://fotografadearquitectura.com/
Lead Architects: Lorenzo Capucci, Riccardo Robustini
Lighting Design: Venturelli Arte e Luce
MEP: Edoardo Baroni – Team Engineering
Contractor: Impresa Edile Tasselli
Landscape Design: Frassinago Garden & Landscape – Federico Ratta
Landscape Contractor: Frassinago Garden & Landscape
Collaborator: Giulia Arduini
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