House with a square window
Set Architects completes the renovation of a single-family house in the rural surroundings of Fondi, in southern Lazio.
The project concerns the architectural completion of an existing building located in the countryside of the Municipality of Fondi, in southern Lazio. At the time of the commission, the load-bearing structure, external infill walls, and the laminated timber roof had already been built.
The clients, a young family, requested a transformation capable of responding to the needs of contemporary living. The challenge lay in reinterpreting a conventional spatial and volumetric layout through targeted interventions designed to introduce discontinuity and generate new spatial relationships.
The interior layout favors open, fluid spaces, reducing partitions to a minimum. The living area is conceived as a continuous environment, articulated solely by the service core, which serves as a backdrop for the open kitchen. The existing staircase was freed from its original enclosing walls and reimagined as a sculptural and lightweight element, emphasized by a slender stainless steel handrail.
Material selection plays a key role in the project. The continuous microcement flooring, natural oak surfaces, metallic elements, and light-toned walls work together to create a warm and welcoming atmosphere, evoking the materials of rural tradition through a contemporary and measured expression.
The façades have been redefined through the insertion of new architectural elements: a large square window on the upper floor frames the surrounding landscape, while two sliding glass doors on the south elevation open the living area to the garden. The side elevations feature smaller openings to ensure greater privacy.
A white plaster finish helps neutralize the building mass, offering an abstract and rarefied appearance. The alternation of different textures and slight setbacks around the openings creates a play of shadows and surfaces, subtly defining a thin, essential stringcourse.
The garden design reinforces the dialogue between interior and exterior, with concrete surfaces and a perimeter band of trees that both filter views and protect the house from the surrounding context.
The project returns to the context a completely renewed building, the result of a careful restoration process, reinterpreting the archetype of the country house through a contemporary lens, open to experimentation and cross-disciplinary influences.
