Villa Cattaneo Cirielli Barbini: adaptive reuse and restoration of an historical villa

RESTORATION OF VILLA CATTANEO CIRIELLI BARBINI
Goals and requirements
According to the client requirements, the main design goal consists into adaptive reuse of an ancient villa, typical of the venetian landscape, from more than 20 years unused.
Considering shape, dimension and characteristics, the villa today is not able to satisfy the contemporary life needs.
The design tries to revitalize an historical building, thought and built in a different era, in order to preserve its original architectural character: noble rural style merging with contemporary design.
Historical and technical-descriptive report
The villa, located in the center of Vallenoncello hamlet near the church and the Noncello river, was built in the second half of the 18th century, it will be becoming one of the numerous residences of the Cattaneo family, who transferred it to the Cirielli Barbini during the 19th century.
On the front there is the garden with tall trees, which protect the villa from external view towards the boundary wall, but which opens the view in the center to an undulating lawn; on the back there is the courtyard with farm buildings.
The villa consists of a long body with two floors raised of a basement level and simple windows with architrave without stone frames; the main facade is characterized by a large protruding tetrastyle pronaos, with entrance staircase and a tympanum supported by four Doric columns, which once framed a noble coat and connects to the serrated eaves frame. A series of cottages are arranged orthogonally to the main building along the road, with the vehicular access to the estate reported by pairs of pilasters.
The villa is characterized by a simple but easily recognizable scheme: there is a spinal wall, parallel to the main façade, on the ground floor that divides the space, showing a distributive ridge on the back side, which connects all the rooms. Other rooms are defined by perpendicular walls to the main facades.
This scheme is applicated only on the ground floor. The first floor conformation is similar but the spinal wall is in fact a space partition, in fact trusses unload their weight directly on perimeter walls.
The basement is also reached through the staircase, placed in an eccentric position compared to the main body, characterized by a vaulted space in brick-face view.
Project
The highlight of the project takes the cue by the recognition of architectural features of the villa described above: from a typological point of view, the distributive ridge is maintained on the back side, as an element of connection to all the units. Perpendicular walls to mains facades facilitate the identification of apartment’s subdivision.
The villa will be split into seven units with different sizes:
• three units located on the ground floor, one of which with independent access,
• two dwellings on two floors
• two units located on the first floor
The project focus aimed to maintain the clarity of the main walls, inserting only new internal partitions for endow all the units to appropriate service spaces (bathrooms, kitchens, junk room, lobbies).
Facades will be only restored on the basis of the indications from historical analysis.
On the first floor, is planned the demolition of the existing false ceiling to showing the timber roof structures, consisting of: trusses, beams, wooden rails and terracotta tiles.
To reduce the building's energy consumption, it’s also planned to create an internal insulation along the perimeter of the building.