PRIVATE ENGAGEMENT

a residential building complex with 3 apartments extends within a foothill plot.

the project reads the porch, a large southward covered space between garden and housing units, as an architectural-urban diaphragm and an heritage settlement principle to be reinterpreted, configuring the building, beyond the porch, by juxtaposed blocks side by side connected by a junction element: the staircase.

the blocks delineate the new transformed unit of the first floor. the upper level is divided in two (sleeping places and living places) by the central staircase that will become an extension in depth of the porch roofing.

the sleeping places define a taller vertical block, with north-south oriented pitches, that emerges as a sort of tower.

the living places define an horizontal block, with east-west oriented pitches, that becomes a suspended platform in the garden.

so a panoramic eastward slab-bridge toward the trees is in a compositional dialogue with the westward block-tower.

in the living places a new inclined sky roof follows the orientation of the internal spaces towards the garden, capturing east light and defining a threshold that opens inner spaces to the sky.

the solar thermal glass allows light to define materials surfaces and spaces by the changing daily, nightly and seasonal light.