Architecture pierced

Image courtesy of altro_studio.

Project Details

• Project Name: Architecture pierced
• Client: Massimo Ilardi
• Project Type: Single Family House
• Principal Designer/s: Annarita Emili
• Design Team: Barbara Pellegrino, Stefania sacco
• Date of commencement of project: 2006
• Date of completion of project: In progress
• Location of site: Italy (west coast)
• Site Area: 1000 sqm
• Built-up Area: 250 sqm

Image courtesy of altro_studio.

The combination of reciprocal sensory interferences becomes a compositional tool: sight, hearing and touch take turns in a succession of indefinite and simultaneous spatial perceptions. Surface, sound and body are represented - like space, time and force - by a geometrical shape that, while strict, logical and coherent, is contaminated by raw material seen as the only element reconnecting to the existential space.

Walls sliding on the outside.

Our senses are induced to perceive the body-architecture in an analytical way - with the viewer having, instead of the precise (removed) sight imposed by an obliged vision, an experience of total perception.

Time becomes the primordial medium in the reading of the body as fragmentation dismantles the unity of the object and reveals its objective reality, constantly changing with the movements of the different architectural parts.

The tear in the body's skin becomes the pierced place enabling the communication between inside and outside. The "raw material" is an alien, contaminating element, a penetrating force that moves; by moving it evokes the sense of touch as a real reminder of its presence and emanates the sounds expressed by its material being: the sounds produced by a concrete panel are different from those produced by a wood panel, just like a steel panel is different from a plastic panel.

View on the court.

The house has no traditional openings but slits, the only elements allowing light into the interior, although an adequate natural lighting is ensured by a large central patio over which a staircase unfolds and that, like a promenade architecturale, leads to the different levels, inducing ever changing feelings.

The rest of the house is based on the principle of void: floors and partitions, except for the technical volumes, are transparent so that the space and the parts' different movements, as well as the sounds, can be totally perceived.

Interior.

Inside the building, just like outside, the material element becomes an exceptional event, the variation of a generally abstract scene. This means that the only elements appearing on every level are the panels forming a flat or inclined floor, a wall, etc. As it becomes perceptible from the outside, the material element turns into something else: the horizontal floor becomes a canopy sheltering the entry; the inner wall acts as an outer panel enclosing part of the open space, so that it becomes intimate and sheltered; the inner ceiling becomes a balcony, etc.... The entry and balcony doors are conceived as elements designed and carved into the wall so that they can be extended when necessary and then folded back into the enclosure.

Credits

• Text: Annarita Emili
• Photographs: Photomontage Annarita Emili