LIH - CINGALLEGRA
The project involved the renovation with extension of a secondary dwelling in the residential suburb of Ascona. The district in question is located close to the lake and is characterised by detached residential buildings surrounded by vast, lush green spaces.
Originally, it was a single-family dwelling organised on two levels with a one-storey secondary volume attached to the building, which included storage rooms and a car park. A quite inconvenient feature of the old building was that the two levels were not connected internally but one always had to go outside to move from one floor to the other.
Initially, the plan was to build a multi-family building, but since both the market, the investment required, and the urban structure hardly lent itself to a large volume, we turned to a radical and complete renovation of the old house. The intervention consisted in reorganising and extending the living spaces, regularising the volumetry and fragmenting the architectural volumes, in such a way as to distinguish the various bodies, built at different times, both in terms of genesis and function.
At the urban level, the work focused on the concept of the Piazza, and therefore all the volumes attached to the basic plan of the old house were juxtaposed in such a way as to order each exterior surface hierarchically. Starting from the external access to the various areas of the land surrounding the house. The layout of the interior and exterior spaces on the ground floor is based on the principle of the cardo-decumanus axes. The main east-west axis (Decumanus) connects the house with the street and is the main access. It is characterised by a decorated corten wall set against a concrete wall and a zenithal opening placed just after the access to the property. The combination of these elements lends power to the main entrance and attracts the visitor's interest to the interior. The continuity of the granite pavement between the external access and the square in front of the house underlines and highlights this path. The secondary south-north axis (Cardo), on the other hand, connects the inner garden with the entrance hall and represents the private entrance to the house. This becomes the real backbone connecting interior and exterior, natural and artificial, between the old building and the new additions. Volumetrically, the building has been extended on several levels where there are residential programmes, while extended on a single level for the accessory bodies such as the garage and the pool dépendance. The construction of these additional buildings has made it possible to generate a new representative access, ensuring greater intimacy within the plot by separating it from the public street. As well as obviously binding the building into a unicum of volumes and paths.
The ground floor is also characterised by a fragmentation of buildings and a deliberate misalignment of volumes, with the aim of creating different views and perspectives reminiscent of typical village nucleus situations and giving quality to the space. A moving between volumes according to the measure of a man's stride. The retreats of the volumes and the projections of the roofs direct people towards the accesses and contribute to the formation of surfaces with a different character, intimate and/or more exposed places. A human management of built volumes that generates proximity of movement without ever leaving residual spaces without purpose or value.
The garden has also been redeveloped and renewed through the construction of a new terrace, which, rising above the natural terrain, acts as a link between the dwelling and the greenery of the strong surrounding nature. Extending further to the south, the terrace accommodates a swimming pool, with adjacent areas that are versatile in their use.
The living contents have been organised with a classical layout: living area on the ground floor and sleeping area on the first floor. The plan of the house is characterised by a central band that includes vertical circulation and a two-storey void. The double-height space visually connects the two levels and acts as a zenithal light carrier in the convivial space. This area emphasises what is at the heart of the house, by using the large chimney on the floor, clad with a horizontal strip of dark corten. The fireplace is thus contrasted with the verticality of the double height, characterising and rooting the communal living area with its centrality.
Externally, the house has been clad with large slabs of rough corten, all dissimilar in width. This full vertical surface is broken up by the horizontality of the decorated stringcourses. The middle decorated band circumscribes the volumes and overhangs of the ground floor, while the upper band acts as a crowning conclusion to the building. The ageing and rusting process of corten will occur naturally, thus changing the appearance of the building over time. The choice of this material is linked to the desire to create a mutable building that would stand out for its strength of grafting in a heterogeneous context. From a distance, the façade is perceived as homogenous, whereas when approaching it, the composition of the elements and its details give uniqueness to the whole, generating distinct effects in terms of orientation and exposure. The continual change of the façade over the years, but also according to the climate of the individual day, enhances the relationship with the outside space characterised by a still flourishing and protagonist nature. The steel tones and the roughness of the opaque surface camouflage the entire volumetric complex in the shadows of the foliage and bark of the trees.
With the new material composition, a minimal connection was sought with the house next door, Casa Rondinella. The dwellings speak the same compositional language with regard to the design of the façade through. the use of fair-faced concrete for the external parts of the building and the dark colour choice of the window and door frames and external blinds.
The name of the house “Cingallegra” has been retained from the past. Similar to the neighbouring houses Pettirosso and Rondinella.
