MCO part 2 | Virginia Lorello

A multi-family villa surrounded by a private garden, with three floors and a very wide greenhouse: each floor will be customized on the base of the needs and aesthetics of the future owner. We are therefore at part no. 2 of this project: the ground floor is intended for the daughter and her partner, lovers of a simple, elegant aesthetic which reminds the industrial world.

o make it possible to divide the property into three different apartments, new volumes have been created with punctual interventions and in respect of the existing ones, including a new stairwell. The construction site was managed by the architect Cappellini, with which the external aesthetic interventions were defined (see part 1). The studio then personally took care of the harmonization and definition of the interiors with the clients in detail.

In this second part we will see the ground floor in detail; some photos were taken by Costantino Bedin, for promotional purposes for Cosentino, one of the brands involved.

The entrance landing is accessed from the main glass body, and its staircase connects the three floors. Light colors link the aesthetics of the apartments, each one characterized differently based on who lives there and their personality.

Let’s enter the ground floor, the young couple’s apartment.

The entrance opens directly onto the living room, where the boiserie gently guides from the entrance door to the rest of the living room, also defining the space between the fireplace and the TV area. Its volumes have been carefully design not only for aesthetic purposes, but to hide several systems and minimize their impact.

Various technical and design solutions have been adopted in the apartment to meet the aesthetic need for harmony and continuity. For example, the stone covering the fireplace is the same as the kitchen countertop and the bathroom coverings; to obtain homogeneity, one of Cosentino’s dekton coverings was chosen, available in different thicknesses and technological treatments – fireproof, stain-resistant, non-slip. The wood essence is an oak specially varnished in the same almond shade of the parquet. Given that it is a natural element, always changing in veins and details, the surfaces are always various and never flat.

The kitchen, connected to the living room, is spatially well defined and opens onto the outside and onto the greenhouse through two openings. The cooking area consists of the island with a break space, on which there is a beautiful hood that emphasizes the limit with the living room. Behind it, the fridge and pantry columns frame the view of the outside, making a delicate impact on the background thanks to their light colour. The intrados made up of the side of the furniture was covered in oak to emphasize the gaze towards the beautiful landscape outside.
Oak, white and stone are in fact the three delicate elements on which the entire composition plays to give harmony, guides the view and establish a rhythm.

The oak handle, the finish of the edges of the shelves, the shoulders of the oak panels play to underline volumes and visual paths like lines on the space, aided by the contrast with the light color of the furnishings.

As anticipated, one of the project objectives was to restore harmony and visual continuity throughout the apartment. The couple preferred solutions with neutral and desaturated colors, so it was necessary to play with the range of neutrals and above all to reproduce the same shades with minimal variations. We therefore propose the same stone of the island and the fireplace, and the same wood essence found previously.
From a planimetric point of view, the challenge was to integrate both the bathtub body and the shower into the available space – above all, restoring an aesthetic pleasantness as well as the continuity of their volumes. The heights of the bathroom furniture and the washbasin area have therefore been studied so that on an ergonomic level they are compatible with a play of floors and furniture design in continuity with the tub, so that they almost seem like a single volume sculpted for the occasion.

The parquet of the house continues up to the window, and the shower and sanitary ware area is defined and covered by dekton, non-slip and with low thicknesses.

The volume of the bedroom was obtained by closing a pre-existing external portico with a wooden structure. The roof was kept and repainted white, like most of the room. The abundant presence of white made it possible to play with stronger and darker tones, without distorting the harmony and luminosity of the project. The dark structure of the bed furniture with integrated headboard and bedside tables is set against a gray painted background that continues up to the window opening.