Design intentions
Some years ago, a client who was both a mathematician and astrologer, asked our studio to design a new house for his family with a study/observatory for himself. The project was quite a conventional request for a family of four, but within all the requirements, his desire for a pure cube form prevailed throughout . This required that we approach the project in a provocative way: the resulting cube with a 10 meters side had to be positioned onto the ground. This intuitive solution conveys a more complex network consisting of varied spaces with very different floor sizes, openings, points of view and distribution hierarchy. Building convention, even in this modern age, supports on the one hand, the idea of a mediterranean culture based on the plasticity of white stucco and on the other, the vernacular immutability of the house of rural tradition. However the project was too radical to be accepted, both for the formal results and for the pre-fab techniques suggested. Ten years later, the same client requested us to build the “Cube House” he rejected years before. Located 15 km east of the northern part of Lake Garda, this residence, which is on the border of a bushed ravine, not far from a small town, is situated within a rocky site in close proximity to a nature park of extreme beauty and wilderness. The house directly interacts with the surrounding landscape with large sloping glass walls and by expanding the internal space towards the valley to the front and the mountains to the back. The wild topography and the presence of large rocks at the building location required both limited site works and foundations. The use of pre-fab building techniques and steel structural elements allowed a building process with low environmental impact. The use of expanded and sintered polyurethane panels, aluminum window frames and laminated exterior panels was firstly based on their considerable light-weight for transporting and mounting, and secondly to provide efficent insulation, both termic and acoustic, to the house. A system of folding partitions for the bedrooms and rolling curtains for the living and study areas provides complete darkness during sleeping and protection from direct sunlight. A cantilevered staircase system rises with the opening of the main door, while the vertical connection is provided by two different steep staircases and a four level lift.