House with Concrete Trusses
In the town of Besnate, in the Varese hinterland the project insists on a diffuse post-war condition: the casa e bottega, a building type that conflated domestic life and small-scale production under a single roof. The apartment occupies the former offices of a family construction company, housed in a 1970s prefabricated shed.
The structure belongs to a recognisable lineage of Italian industrial building: precast concrete elements of the so-called sistema Varese, a hybrid of standardised spans and site-specific assembly typical of the construction industry between the 1950s and 1970s. It is the same system that, on the exterior, separates the dwelling from the warehouse through a full-height portal — a prefabricated tympanum formed by the same reticulated beam that reappears inside, marking the threshold between the two volumes of the compound. Within, these trusses define the full depth of the space. At the time of the intervention, they were entirely concealed: suspended flat ceilings had parcelled the interior into offices and storage rooms, suppressing the geometry above.
The project begins with an act of exposure, removing the false ceilings — the structure, once revealed, becomes the primary ordering device of the new dwelling. Two previously disconnected levels are joined into a single unit. The intervention does not impose a new spatial logic onto the existing shell, but proceeds by precise, localised insertions that negotiate between the inherited geometry and the requirements of domestic life.
On the ground floor, the demands of new building services required the complete renewal of the floor — an opportunity taken to lay a continuous resin surface that enters into chromatic dialogue with the exposed concrete trusses above, unifying the entire level into a single base. From here, the living zone opens as a continuous space — kitchen, dining and living — from which two vertical connections of opposite character depart. The first is a spiral staircase in mint-painted steel, light and chromatic, rising to a mezzanine study: the balustrade extends horizontally to become a work surface, and the original terrazzo floor — multi-coloured, screziato, a found material restored to its dignity — spreads beneath the exposed trusses.
The second is a straight monolithic and silent stair that leads to the intermediate level of the pre-existing dwelling, where a second bedroom occupies a quieter register: the original inlaid parquet has been carefully restored, its warmth and intricacy forming a deliberate counterpoint to the industrial rawness of the levels below.
Above the principal truss, freed also along its edge beam, the main bedroom is transformed by a single decisive addition: new zenithal openings cut through the roof plane, introducing light from above. Against the white walls and pine plywood joinery — the consistent language of all bespoke furniture and built-in storage — the project deploys colors as chromatic landmarks, orienting movement through a dwelling assembled from found layers and new insertions in equal measure. Light arrives indirectly. The concrete porticos along the perimeter filter it before it reaches the interior, giving it a diffuse, courtyard-like quality.
