Securing a Villa Dominicale
“A few sheets of lead put in time upon a roof, a few dead leaves and sticks swept in time out of a water-course, will save both roof and walls from ruin. Watch an old building with an anxious care; guard it as best you may, and at any cost, from every influence of dilapidation. [...] and do this tenderly, and reverently, and continually, and many a generation will still be born and pass away beneath its shadow."
(John Ruskin, The Seven Lamps of Architecture)
The countryside surrounding Grado is so flat that the mountains appear like a cut-out backdrop on the horizon. The sea is out of sight but palpably close, and everything here benefits from fertile land, just lightly brushed by the salt air. The orderly boundaries of the large garden— one corner of the ancient agricultural centuriation that stretches to the lagoon—barely contain a wild disorder, the untamed chaos of nature left to itself for decades. The vegetation is so lush that, on approaching, the roof of the manor house can only just be glimpsed.
Almost nothing of the original building remained: after heavy remodeling in the 1960s that irreparably altered its image, the villa had been abandoned for decades. The roof and openings were on the verge of collapse and the early 20th-century typological features were entirely lost. Only inside could the traces of its origins still be discerned: the doors, floors, and a staircase with a carved wooden railing sketched the outlines of a history that seemed erased from the outside.
The safety intervention requested by the municipal administration aims to provide a straightforward solution to preserve the building. This was achieved through the reconstruction of the roof, the replacement of the windows, and the restoration of the external surfaces. Securing a building is far more than merely repairing evident damage; it is a comprehensive effort to ensure its protection and structural durability over time. It means enabling the building to endure, to survive until someone else takes it over and brings it to life with new stories. It is about pausing the accelerated decay caused by neglect and abandonment and protecting the structure to pass it on to the future.
This intervention was designed to fit into a specific temporal phase in the life of a building: after the original construction and the changes that altered its envelope, the project focuses on addressing "necessary states" in both functional and aesthetic terms. It works on the ancestral role of architecture as a mediator between form and function, through the history and narratives that every artifact—and every architect— carries.
Beyond the technical solution, the project sought to do more: to rebalance the building’s envelope, bringing it back to a neutral state that marks the start of a new phase in its existence. The white cube now shines as though newly arrived, while the landscape recognizes it as an ancient, dominant element. It merges with nature, not through continuity but juxtaposition, in a stereometric rigor that doesn’t clash with the garden’s wildness but instead engages in constant dialogue. The vegetation doesn’t touch the structure, except for the shadows it casts, yet it pervades it with its presence, enveloping and protecting it.
Depending on the movement of the sun, everything changes in the relationship between the house and the garden. Branches and leaves create an ever-shifting design on the white canvas of the facades, while inside, the trees’ foliage becomes living paintings framed by the villa’s large windows, gazing out at the landscape.
The interior remains untouched— a new chapter in its story will address it in the future. In this prolonged moment frozen in time, the building will continue to exist, silent but safe— a refuge of calm and order within the wild essence surrounding it. Once the shutters, flush with the external cladding, are closed, the villa transforms into an impenetrable treasure chest, a contemporary castle awaiting its next invaders.But opening a single window is all it takes to resume the relentless dialogue and let life flow back in.
