E+D. Reuse of an apartment | Simone Censi

INTRO

The project concerns the internal reorganization of a house that is placed on the top floor of a building built in the Sixties in Fermo, Italy. The project, focusing on the themes of lightness, brightness and visual permeability, seeks to enhance the features of the height in which the flat is located.

The architectural elements are not intended to impose themselves but serve to define the space as a dimension in which human activities are carried out.

LIVING ROOM

The living room becomes the main space of the house, the meeting place of the family, the environment in which most of the household activities can take place: it assumes the same importance of the traditional houses of the region. The living room, owning two large windows, is the brighter space of the house, by which we better perceive the surrounding landscape, urban and rural. It has three openings, two to the long corridor of distribution and one toward the kitchen. The large separation wall is therefore a wing that maintains a high degree of permeability, confers perspective depth and measures the space. The kitchen, although separated from the main space, does not remain isolated but participates in the realization of its main environment in which there is the dining table. The room is conceived as the place in which three activities converge: a dining area, a living area and a study area. The three activities will contaminate and allow a multifunctionality. The bottom wall of the room, by means of the shelves of the library, assumes a thickness by generating a sense of depth perception, the same sense of depth that the three large openings generate on the side wall. The longitudinal cut, the declaration of the lightness of the separator element and the continuation of the floor hidden by the low ceiling, creates a shadow that goes to strongly emphasize the corner.

CORRIDOR

The ceiling of the long corridor is lowered to define a rectangular section of width 1.20 m and height 2.40 m. The long corridor, in addition to fulfilling the function of distribution, establishes a visual relationship between the openings positioned in opposite sides, resulting in an axis that connects the city with the hilly landscape. The corridor is defined by three large hollow blocks used as closets, closed by means of doors, keeps a great formal sobriety. The small bathroom that is at the service of the living area overlooks on it. By creating a large storage compartments, means to allow the use of the ordered house by preventing the installation of elements affecting its spatial geometry. In the sides of the blocks mirrors and shelving are accommodated, that confer identity and life of its own to the passage but at the same time they compress the thickness. The rigid orthogonal system is continually challenged by the numerous combinations of diagonal views that, enhanced by the mirrors, put in communication almost all areas of the flat.

Base in stone and parquet flooring mat, materials upon which the light is posing without being reflected, contribute to the sobriety and welcome.

REUSE

The reused furniture, such as the suspended expo, have been considered, from the earliest planning stages, elements that would define the new shape of the house. They are the only moving objects while those designed ex-novo are fixed and inseparable from the project, according to the same principle by which the niches carved into the walls of traditional houses were generating an inseparable relationship between architecture and furniture. Architecture becomes a tool that takes place when it is used and contaminated. The same books placed in the library define an architectural space designed in the design stage. During the day the rooms are illuminated by beams of light that permeate the large windows and, reflecting on adjacent walls, make them suspended. At night, the artificial lighting, organized in gangs led, allows a uniform illumination environment.

The project demonstrates how the "Reuse" can start from two assumptions which characterize the design ex-novo, the enhancement of existing through a new reading and interpretation, and an added value conferred to the project as a device that takes advantage of the start conditions, drawing an advantage. The “Reuse” means to guarantee the best conditions for the development of human activities that are different compared to a previous situation. In this case it is desired to transform a house designed for a family of five to one for two, just by trying to provide the best conditions of living you can think of an effective reuse. The achievement was made possible thanks to the trust of a client attentive and helpful who has understood and accepted a proposal for a radical transformation of the flat.