Milanese workplace Co.arch Studio has emphasised angular geometries on this revamp of an residence in one of many best-known buildings by neo-modernist architect Mario Galvagni.
Co.arch Studio founders Andrea Pezzoli and Giulia Urciuoli oversaw the renovation of the residence, which is situated on the fourth and fifth flooring of Giomein, an residence complicated accomplished by Galvagni in 1972 in Breuil-Cervinia, northern Italy, one of many highest ski resorts within the Alps.
When the homeowners purchased the residence, it was lavishly furnished with jacquard cloth wall coverings, timber panelling, mirrored surfaces and wall-to-wall carpets in each room, together with bogs.
The renovation permits the angular surfaces of the experimental constructing to grow to be extra focal than they had been beforehand.
Pezzoli and Urciuoli explored the opportunity of preserving a number of the earlier fittings, however found that almost all had been worn past restore. This led them to as an alternative pursue a “return to the naked bones”.
“On this return to the naked bones, the inside’s expressive parts emerged extra sharply,” the architects defined.
“The roof, clad externally in copper and internally in larch boards, echoes the logic of mountain ridgelines by way of variable heights and acute volumes; and the projecting bow home windows are understood as optical gadgets that regulate the connection between inhabitant and panorama.”
The architects took a equally elemental strategy to the inside design, utilizing completely different supplies and hues to offer numerous objects and furnishings a way of visible weight.
A key reference was Carlo Scarpa’s Casa Tabarelli, situated close to the ski slopes of Bolzano, which creates tensions by way of the relationships between angular geometries, colors and materials surfaces.
Ground surfaces had been adjusted in the lounge to create an oak-framed dialog pit that takes cues from Mario Bellini’s Seventies Camaleonda couch, dealing with a Verde Alpi marble hearth that extends floor-to-ceiling.
Extra inexperienced marble is dotted by way of the remainder of the residence, together with a step on the room’s entrance and splashbacks and bathe partitions within the bogs.
Behind the dialog pit, a custom-made blue eating desk and matching wood-veneered bench observe the traces of the uneven home windows, whereas a brand new rotated-square window appears by way of to a kitchen that includes pale inexperienced cupboards and a stainless-steel counter.
The architects describe this element as “a managed homage to the luminous geometries of Galvagni’s frequent areas”.
There are three bedrooms, together with a essential bed room with a restored Bellini-designed Le Mura mattress in brown corduroy velvet and a kids’s room that includes a custom-made bunk with playful cutaways.
On the loft stage, a mattress platform was constructed right into a window bay that options newly put in timber shutters.
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Pale limestone flooring had been put in within the bogs and kitchen, whereas different rooms had been fitted with Besana carpets in a mixture of shades.
The Milanese homeowners have accomplished the inside with artworks by Pablo Bronstein, Iva Lulashi, Joanna Piotrowska and Jeremy Shaw.
“The inside design strikes inside a exact steadiness, preserving the spatial reminiscence of the Seventies with out actually replicating its ornamental codes,” mentioned Pezzoli and Urciuoli.
The duo hope the challenge will convey new consideration to the structure of Galvagni, who was lengthy missed by critics.
His work was hardly ever printed in Italian architectural magazines reminiscent of Casabella or Domus, maybe as a result of his strategy was extra contextual than that of contemporaries working within the Alpine area, reminiscent of Marcel Breuer or Charlotte Perriand.
“The Giomein residence works by way of subtraction and precision; it clears away what time has made fragile, recomposes spatial coherence and restores a up to date domesticity to Galvagni’s structure,” mentioned Pezzoli and Urciuoli.
“The result’s an inside during which the panorama shouldn’t be solely a view however a structural situation; getting into the slopes of the ceiling, the path of sunshine cuts and the posture of the furnishings, changing into a part of the on a regular basis lifetime of its inhabitants and their assortment.”
Different current Italian renovations featured on Dezeen embrace a conversion of a Tuscan chapel into “home for artwork” by Atelier Vago and the transformation of a Rome “villino” with glass flooring and mirrored ceilings.
The pictures is by Francesca Iovene.
