San Giacomo House | Ilaria Di Carlo

The owner of this XIX century country house located on the lovely hills of the Italian region Marche commissioned us for both the restoration of the existing building and the design of a new extension.

The client request was to substitute an old existing detached 1960’s garage with a new structure which would be harmonically attached to the old house, a listed building, but provided with abundant light, a missing characteristic of the old house with its thick walls and small windows.

The design of the new volumes develops out of the old structure, trying to create continuity in terms of lines and proportions with the existing, denouncing however at the same time the juxtaposition of two different periods: one more rustic, where the restoration process reveals and brings back to light the different stratifications and construction techniques and the other one, extremely pure and essential in terms of both geometry and materials palette.

The main house is restored exposing and praising in fullness its rural character, its imperfections, the materiality of its surfaces, mixing old materials, like the old ‘coppi’ (shingles) with new techniques, like the use of special injections to preserve the old wood beams.

The new extension on the contrary is treated as a sort of all white figure, sculpted by the light entering from the different windows cut in the facades modulating the light during the different hours of the day and the succession of the seasons.

 A glass prism is located as the knot between the old and the new, guaranteeing also plenty of light to the existing adjacent kitchen area, and a continuous resin floor throughout the entire complex emphasizes the fluidity of the passage between spaces unfolding at different levels as a sort of unifying carpet.