Casa VDV

The architect Gianni Veneziano and the designer Luciana di Virgilio's summer house is in Molfetta, Puglia, in the south of Italy. The house is a historic building, some parts of which date back to the XVI century, located in the historic centre of the town, precisely on the ring of the external old walls which are dipped into water. It is wonderful to discover that in the Middle Ages this kind of buildings standing on the rocks were the houses of the fishermen, who were in this way able to get on their boats docked just there below. During the centuries the building has gone through a stratification of works, indeed the lower part was built on pre‐existent structures ‐ similar to pile dwellings‐ and it still keeps nowadays traces of the medieval fabric; on the ground floor the stone vaults still keep the sixteenth‐century marks. The upper part and the facade were built between the end of the seventeenth century and the eighteenth century. Developed on two levels, before the last renovation works, the building was organized in two big open space rooms. However, the need to shape up a more practical setting got the designers to think of their house as a big box in which to put other boxes carrying out the principal functions of everyday life. This choice was also meant to preserve the pre‐existent structure and its historical traces, for example the cross vaults and some sixteenth‐century fanlights. As a result some small environments were created, thus allowing a connection between past and present. The architectural path develops on two levels: − Ground floor: living area connected both to the kitchen and to a typical balcony jutting over the sea, master bedroom, guest bedroom, bathroom; − Basement: a big open space with parts of walls which define three different areas not separated one from the other. The materials chosen for the structural works were plasterboard and white finish for floors and walls, which in this way are the right setting of the mix of pieces of furniture made up of objects designed by Gianni Veneziano, modern elements and cult pieces of contemporary design.