Via delle Serri

Pistoia, Italy - 2013

The project consists in the renovation of a single-family building of the '70s within a complex of residential buildings near a small hill village in the Municipality of Pistoia. The property is located at the top of a promontory, on the border between the built up area and a dense forest typical of the Apennines. With the desire to give a new image and new housing qualities to the residence, the intervention was based on a subtraction operation, from the existing building, of all those elements that did not contribute to qualitatively characterize the architectural volumes and living spaces . This path has led to the configuration of a building with strong plastic connotations based on a few essential elements, present but not explained in the original building, a monolith characterized by rigorous geometric shapes and a dark gray color, apparently closed and hermetic, which wants relate decisively with the strong natural presence characterized by the tree-lined masses of the surrounding garden and the surrounding forest. The sculptural mass of the house is shaped by internal tensions that find the maximum expression in the loggia on the first floor, a large telescope oriented south towards the valley. The new architectural object is revealed in reality as a device, structured to stimulate contact and the relationship with nature, which operates through the articulated system of openings with different sizes depending on the destinations of the internal rooms.