Casa Ward Carl Fredrik Svenstedt Architects

By Editorial Staff - 31 July 2023
PB Finestre has participated in the project

Foreigners traveling in Italy often fall in love with the landscape and villages of the Belpaese. This happened to a Swedish couple who chose the Sibillini Mountains, in the eastern Apennines, to build their summer home, Casa Ward. A place with rugged landscapes and dramatic contours, this area of Marche has numerous abandoned farmhouses, destroyed by the earthquakes that have hit the region in recent years.

The project, the work of Paris-based Swedish studio Carl Fredrik Svenstedt Architect, needed to take this harsh setting into account. In agreement with its clients, the studio designed a house that is cutting edge from the technical perspective and sustainable in terms of energy and materials. Casa Ward was built over the ruins of an abandoned farmhouse, the rubble from which was reused in the new construction.

Casa Ward - Carl Fredrik Svenstedt Architect Photography by and courtesy of Dan Glasser

Casa Ward: Like a telescope trained on the horizon

The area’s particularly exacting seismic building code meant that the architects needed to design the home with a reinforced concrete frame. They enclosed this in a brick and stone shell, using materials from the old home. The result is a structure that plays with time, occupying the middle ground between the traditional and contemporary from the perspective of both aesthetics and materials.

The home is built along an east-west line, perpendicular to the mountains which run north-south. As a result, it’s well camouflaged into the hill where it stands. To all effects and purposes, Casa Ward resembles a telescope, with its rooms distributed in succession one after the other to create a continuous, open space and an interplay of levels that extends outwards towards nature and the horizon.

Casa Ward - Carl Fredrik Svenstedt Architect Photography by and courtesy of Dan Glasser

The structure’s linear volume mimics the surrounding mountains, of which it offers ever-changing views as one moves from inside to outside and through its open spaces.

Following the natural slope of its site, Casa Ward is on two levels. A courtyard at the entrance leads to the living area on one side and to the bedroom area on the other. The project also has an outdoor swimming pool flanked by a pavilion that frames views of the Sibillini Mountains.

>>> Casa Ward is one of the World Architecture Festival 2023 shortlisted projects