L.E.A house

Project Description

A young couple commissioned us the project after having bought an apartment in a building under construction. The unit occupies half of the third floor on the south side of the building that has the best view on the city and the see in the distance. Since the construction sits on a slope facing south, a valley that crosses part of the city separating the downtown from the uptown, it follows that the unit is located on the seventh floor. The two, with a nomadic lifestyle that alternates moments of hectic work and long travels around the world, wanted a flat with the minimum private space and maximum public plus a lot of cabinets where to store and hide all the stuff accumulated in their travels. Basically they want to live in an almost empty space with a small intimate pocket. In the meanwhile a baby is born and perhaps those habits will change for a while.

The exterior walls’ outline was the only obligation to be respected, including windows position and plumbing. The aim was to maximise the total available area suiting the requirements from the client and providing a flexible space that could enable change. The design is based on a series of interconnected rooms with different programs, with no hierarchy; the different sequences of the spaces are due to the inhabitant’s needs, uses, paths, habits etc. This generates a condition of continuity through the variation, and the possibility to use the spaces like separated parts or linked to the whole. The edges of the rooms are occupied by servant volumes which define the solid part, the rest is like an hollow box. Cuts through the volumes provoke the connections.

The balcony that surrounds the apartment on the three sides works like an exterior corridor, a gallery each room can have access to. The two bedrooms can be completely separated, there’s a precise line that defines the limits of the private space guarantying privacy.

The floor is a continuous oak wood surface through the entire apartment; it changes direction in each room generating a pattern that defines the single spaces. The servant volumes are finished with white matt lacquer, they are mainly cabinets or open shelves. Some of them open up completely introducing another space like a study niche, a vanity, a pantry; these pockets are characterized by a specific colour or a different material. The almost neutrality of the volumes is disturbed by the colours that range from sulphur yellow, chocolate brown, grey, pink to black-blue. The Carrara marble is used both in the bathrooms and in the kitchen. The master bathroom is completely clad with the marble, a Carrara pool. The others are clad partially. In the kitchen the marble is used in the rectangular volume of the island and in the cooking niche insert in the cabinet. The edge of the volume facing the bedrooms is finished with the mirror, symmetrically at the edge of the volume facing the kitchen on the opposite side runs a mirror sliding door; the spaces are multiplied, thus amplifying the physical and visual relations of the rooms.

Project Details:

Client: Private
Status: Completed, August 2015
Category: Interior / residential
Location: Sassari, Sardinia, Italy
Site: 3rd floor unit in a residential building
Site Area: 124.5 m2 indoor + 74m2 outdoor

Architect: MAR office
Team: Renato Juarez Corso & Paola Mongiu with Daniele Bonetti, Elizaveta Sudravskaya

Collaborators:
Contractor: Nieddu Costruzioni
Furnishing: Falegnameria Zara
Lighting: Elcom