CARETAKER HOUSE
The task of the competition was to design a detached house for a villa’s caretaker in a quite small defined area.The context is Bologna, an ancient town in Italy, where almost all buildings are made of bricks.Moreover the countryside and the ancient farms of the region in which Bologna is located led us to use bricks as functional and decorative element.
Due to the characteristics of the slope on which the building was going to be situated, since the early sketches the project wanted to establish a close relationship with the ground.
The limits of the project area coincided with a kind of parallelogram.
The upper brick band marks the limits of the given project area.
This sort of suspended brick box creates, in relation with the concrete base, an in-between area capable to mediate inside and outside.
The terracotta floor creates a continuity through the living space and the garden, bending the ramp to interact with the slope.
Part of the south-east facade is characterized by a suspended deep beam, in which the brick layout creates a porous space, characterized by a certain degree of privacy. Brick has been used as a functional element as well as a decoration.
The composition of volumes matches to the different levels of the house: basement, kitchen, living room, and terrace on the top.
At the upper level a masterbed room and a big terrace, also accessible from the living space.
