VILLA DEL CILIEGIO

The project area is located in a residential area of ​​Montesilvano town in Abruzzo region, a sloping area from which you can see the sea and the city below.
The residential area is made up of several recently built villas which do not have a particular compositional or architectural character. I started from the study of the shape of the historic Abruzzo’s nineteenth-century villas, which created a collective imagination of the coast. The starting point was to create a villa that had those proportions, adapting the clients' requests for a two-level house.

SITEPLAN

The villa develops longitudinally along the elongated lot, maintaining the main accesses on the north - east front on the access road.

The distance of the building from the swimming pool is defined in order not to get shadow areas in the swimming surface in the various periods of the year. The basic idea was to create a house, seeking a continuous relationship with the landscape and the sea in the distance. 

TRADITION AND INNOVATION

The design of the villa, wants to start from these characteristics site to define that relationship with the place with which to enter into symbiosis.

The main purpose was not to design a house "in the manner of the ancients", but with the spirit of the ancients, taking advantage of new technologies while respecting the proportions, colors and use of materials that create an intimate and lasting relationship with the surrounding landscape.

I worked a lot on the section of the building to maintain the proportions with the surroundings, but also to create a strong connection with the sea in the distance. In fact, the ground floor was designed as a permeable space from which to gaze at the sea and relate to the surrounding garden. The living room and study are located here, overlooking the swimming pool, while the kitchen and dining room are connected to the garden and vegetable patch to the south.

The bedrooms are located on the first floor, where the double bedroom overlooks a balcony towards the sea and the single bedrooms overlook the internal courtyard to the south. The corridor that separates the sleeping areas overlooks the double-height space of the living room, a meeting point for the entire family. Instead, the basement is used as a laundry room, plant cabin and wine cellar.

GEOMETRIES AND PERSPECTIVES

The shape of the house is the result of this continuous dialogue with the site, in fact the volume of the staircase arranged centrally to the building, becomes the fulcrum on which the perspective lines towards the landscape converge, defining at the same time the internal perimeters of the house.

The volume is excavated on the north - east front, becoming the main entrance of the house, while on the north - west side, a smaller excavation of the volume defines the secondary entrance. The volume extends itself to south over the kitchen space, creating a shaded area, while the south-west courtyard defines the perimeter towards the outdoor garden.

RAUMPLAN

We wanted to take advantage of site peculiarities like the sweet slope of the hill, making it part of an experience to be lived inside the house. Here the idea of ​​the “raumplan” intended as internal environments placed on different quotes, according to the 'land natural slope axis, generating a continuous relationship between interior and the external spaces.

COURTYARDS

The northeast courtyard located on the main downstream façade becomes the space of relationship between the living room, the study and the central staircase; here an ornamental tree will be planted on a permeable surface.

In the other part, the south-west courtyard is part of the corner of the house, close to the living room and kitchen, this space is thought of as a place of shelter, a surface where you can insert ornamental plants and create shaded areas.

INTERNAL LAYOUT

The house is mainly developed on three levels including the cantina floor.

The interior design has been thought with the purpose of the solar exposures and the maximum energy needs, the use that customers will make of them during the various periods of the year, and the relationship with the external space.