Villa Castagnola | Mino Caggiula Architects

VILLA CASTAGNOLA

Location: Lugano Castagnola, Switzerland
Built surface: 556 sqm
Date: 2020

The driving force of Villa Castagnola, in the deontological logic of the designer, aims to realize the desired requests of the owner of the property. The latter intends to develop a project for a final client “still unknown”.The project pursues the logic of real estate and related transactions in order to maximize not only the maximum exploitation of the building indexes but also the enhancement of the intrinsic positive peculiarities of the site.  Following this principle we have emphasized the logical thinking we call “the immense value of the obvious”, able to maximize in a simple but not banal way the positive values and minimizing the negative ones. The architectural form therefore springs from the light, the view of the valley and the lake, as well as from the steep orography of the site, until reaching details such as the visual overhang of a majestic conifer that hinders with its presence much of the view of the lake from the building site. From the intention of enhancing and balancing these elements, derives the concept of framing the view, the guiding idea of the project.

The surrounding environment thus penetrates the building, defining its spaces and orientation. The positioning of the body on the plot reflects a search for maximum elevation allowed in order to open up the view to the panorama as much as possible. The entrance defined by the most “logistically” optimal point, creates a circular motion inside the volume that ends in a path of inertia, culminating with a frame towards the most beautiful landscape. This circular internal motion is also evident in the external volume, becoming a cut of light on the sloping roof. Characterizing the interior spaces, carefully regulated in a composition resulting from the necessity of living, as well as from the external elements mentioned above, the spatial perception of the architecture is given by a succession of moments, like shots of photography, of life.