House renovation in Gassino

An unfinished single house had been built a few years ago on a wooden hill not far from the city of Turin: this anonymous volume standing in the middle of a sloping ground surrounded by trees, was to complete and enlarge.

The aim was to break the unity of the existing volume and to give strong visual character to the different elements of the composition: instead of a single close object “placed” in the landscape, a series of surfaces acting as landscape scenes.

The western facade wall plays a central role in this composition: it has been stoned – like all the other walls – and it has been extended at the edges to establish a first visual plan. A continuous skylight has been inserted between the roof and the wall, in order to stress his “autonomy” from the volume and to create a long strip of light inside the house. A new curved stone wall sustains a part of the slope: here technical facilities and the garage have been located. The new landscape is now characterized by many stone walls on different visual levels: they mould the shape of the hill and make a sort of a “base” of the wood in the background.

These heavy elements are counterpointed by the new roof: it acts as a light structure independent from the facade thanks to the wide skylight. From the distance the roof looks like a long and thin copper slab stressing the horizontality of the house: on the south corner it floats above thin steel columns forming a deep canopy – the entrance hall – that links the house and the hill.