Apartment I - CD’O
The project renovates an existing apartment in Rome through a clear and restrained architectural approach. The intervention exposes the original reinforced concrete structure, allowing beams and columns to define the spatial order of the interior. New materials and finishes are introduced through a neutral palette, improving natural light conditions and establishing continuity across the domestic spaces.
The layout is organized around a simple system in which light becomes the primary design driver, reorganizing a previously dark interior. Spatial relationships are defined through controlled separations and connections, using volumetric elements that act as thresholds between rooms and produce a continuous yet articulated domestic sequence.
At the entrance, a full-scale print of an eighteenth-century Roman rural landscape is applied to the wall surface. The image operates as a constructed interior horizon, counterbalancing the small garden located on the opposite side of the space. Wooden frame elements subdivide the surface, reinforcing its ambiguity as both image and architectural boundary, and generating a condition of virtual depth within the interior.
A custom plywood volume is placed at the centre of the apartment, structuring the transition between entrance and living areas. It operates as a multifunctional element that both divides and connects spaces, partially obstructing views while framing others, and reinforcing the alignment of the existing structural system without being structural itself.
The element remains deliberately ambiguous—separator and connector, solid and hollow, furniture and architectural device—and its presence introduces a continuous tension between enclosure and openness. The interior is organized through relations of contrast, reflection, and overlap, replacing strict compartmentalization with a more interpenetrative spatial logic.
