A summer house

It is not at all easy to summarize a place in an idea when this place is home.

The right detachment is missing, but it is precisely upon this emotionality that the strength of simple and free project lies.

When detachment is not possible, when indeed it attracts ideas, opposing represents an unforgivable design error. Such strong influences, as the affective memories buried here under layers of improbable restructuring, represented for me the place and the occasion, and the mixture of these two elements gave birth to the project.

The original family home of the 1930s, the beautiful villa with clean and airy volumes of the holiday days on the shores of Lake Garda, perhaps a little bourgeois in its placid and sunny idea of privileged leisure, was buried by layers of architectural reworking, of useless decorative frills and volumes, added over time from the 1970s.

The Project

It took a little crazy courage to get rid of everything and go back to basics, give up the usual spaces and comfortable volumes, cut, remove, simplify.

Cleanliness, of concepts and volumes, to find the origins.

Impossible, indeed unforgivable, to reproduce what had been lost forever over the years, it would have been an unforgivable architectural fake, but there was very little left of the beautiful villa of the thirties, besides ideas and concepts. The new project has therefore maintained the formal rigor of the thirties, cleaned up the facades by re-aligning the openings, full and empty spaces, and the shadows, in a more respectful way of the original language.

There are three essential materials that compose the project, they emerged both by studying the blueprints of the original project and by tearing off old dusty carpets and curtains as well: travertine marble, sober and elegant, natural wood, and last but not least, light.

The need for privacy & intimacy of the spaces – on one side – and the openness of the shining light – on the other one- burst into the project everywhere, flooded the spaces more than the lake did, and represented the two great opposites that attract each other for the entire development of the project. When ideas develop almost spontaneously, without having to force them, it means that you are probably on the right path.

The symbiotic relationship with the place inspired the rest, a quiet open balance on the water.

The volume is recomposed, compact, few changes to the original languages, just the homage to the nautical way in the overhangs and balconies, which recall the bridge of certain ferries and which project long lines of shadows on the geometric intertwining facades, and they recall the fabrics of the interiors, and the logo, and the games of our graphic spirals scattered almost everywhere that wink at the few decorative geometric Decò concessions, but only for attentive observers.

Ach. Federica Mometto