The villa is located in the district of San Giuseppe in Padua. The district developed after war period is characterized by an irregular density, with buildings of different heights, very close together, and that insist on very small lots.
The particularity of the place and the difficulties of access to the site heavily influenced the design choices, forcing a sartorial work based on the definition of the spaces and on a few compositional details.
The house was originally a two-family building of the '50s with a very thin structure without any relationship with the small external space.
First of all we tried to recover the relationship with the outside, on the more intimate side to the west, expanding the living area through the openings of the kitchen and the living room on the patio.
The patio has been conceived as a further outdoor room through which you can enjoy the change of the seasons and the wall-garden has become like a sort of perspective background of the living area, increasing its brightness and airiness during the winter months.
The long step in biancone marble mediates between the internal space and the external space and at the same time serves as an external seat.
To the east, access to the property has been redefined and distinguished. On the left the driveway access on a dark gravel ground and in the center of the house the pedestrian access that takes place through the filter of the small garden.
In the entrance the design difficulty was that of combining the welcoming environment with the cumbersome presence of the internal staircase.
The idea was to lighten the internal staircase by physically detaching it from the walls and lifting it from the floor.
Further characterization was sought through the design of the intrados of the zig-zag staircase, the long step and the use of materials.
Externally the strong presence of the volume of the building compared to the lot has been resized by differentiating the two floors of the building horizontally through the use of the gray "ashlar" ground floor.