HOUSE IN TRIESTE

DESCRIZIONE: This project was designed re-interpreting, in a contemporary key, the tradition of Italian coastal architecture, the Mediterranean and holiday home,...

This project was designed re-interpreting, in a contemporary key, the tradition of Italian coastal architecture, the Mediterranean and holiday home, which has often drawn inspiration from the context and the fascination of the landscape over the twentieth-century. The house, built half way along the coast on the plateau overlooking the bay of Trieste, develops the theme of the façade playing between a counterpoint between front and back, between being and appearing, between hiding and revealing. The prospect towards the sea was thought out as a great screen on which and from which reality can be perceived and understood, through an ambiguous game of emanations and refractions. The building is built on two levels, above ground, but the division appears only functional; both floors obey a single, strong necessity, that of facing downhill, towards the sea, a necessity that was transmuted into a law of composition. This propensity conditions the orientation of the main rooms and even their geometry: the interior is created by the translation of the outer perimeter which contains the interior, as shown by the outside staircase which leads to the basement. This translation can be seen on the downhill prospect, where the glass curtain wall corresponding to the sitting room and to the master bedroom retreats, pivoting on one side, thus leaving one corner completely empty. A metal frame has the task of re-establishing the geometrical unity of the perimeter and of the façade, at the same time confers on the prospect downhill that sense of openness and airiness necessary to greet the horizon. Towards the road, uphill, the facade is silent and private, its extension on one side forms a protective screen; only a metal gate, the only break, shows the natural landscape which the house has chosen as its only, privileged interlocutor. On the flat roof, a series of parallel cuts (almost a homage to Lucio Fontana) provides an extremely evocative, abstract image of the house to those who perceive it from the upper levels of the mountain. It is an image that can be read as an apparatus of gills through which the architectural organism gives breath to the life lived inside.