Multiply | Enrico Forestieri

Multiply is part of a personal line of research on interiors oriented towards enhancing the material aspects of context and design [as a reference, see Orsonero Coffee, Penthouse for a composer (designed together with Matteo Pace), As time goes by projects at www. enricoforestieri.com].

The project radically transforms a small two-room apartment of an early twentieth- century "casa a ballatoio" by eliminating traces of more recent interventions such as an oppressive beaded false ceiling, a "country club" fireplace, and a poorly oriented bathroom. Instead, it sheds light on the original spatial qualities. Moreover, it gives the rooms a new, unsuspected domestic atmosphere with small but highly targeted actions.

The intervention is concentrated along the central spine. It consists of a structure of minimal surface area and materiality, not to physically and visually take away space from the main rooms, and minimal weight to not burden the precarious existing structures. Details are dry, and the transitions between materials respond equally to technical and compositional choices.

A lightweight concrete platform marks the "intervention ribbon" and houses all the new installations. The vertical surfaces are birch plywood panels fixed to a larch frame or large rotating opaline polycarbonate doors. They disarticulate the volume's apparent compactness through their motion, constantly reshaping the privacy and proximity relationships between different living functions.

Multiply simultaneously acts on material, constructional and economic aspects. It probes their intimate relationships and explores their spatial and perceptive transformation potential.

Multiply is less for more.