Villa in Messina

The design of this villa in Messina draws deeply on the essence of the surrounding landscape. It sits high up, with a commanding view of the Strait of Messina and the urban environment. The project takes full advantage of these sweeping visuals, creating terraces and balconies overlooking the sea and the Calabrian coast across the strait, with these views almost merging into those of the surrounding urban area. The plan creates relations with the built environment and the natural landscape through the use of sizeable balconies and glazed doors and windows, a two-way dynamic underscored by transparency. Such an approach also helps instil a contrast between diffuse daylight and the focused, artificial lighting that projects onto the landscape at night. The use of light around the house suggests the illumination is an actual extension of the volume, with sliding blinds filtering and modifying the light from inside. This osmotic relationship is a direct result of the exterior solutions, the internal organisation and the overall layout of this three-storey villa - one partially dug into the slope and the other two above ground. In the garden, the lawn is marked by clumps of trees that play a dual role providing decoration and seclusion. The exterior, though, is characterised by light coloured concrete walkways that extend the built space, physically increasing the size of the villa. The white concrete pathway - a sort of "architectural promenade" - lies at an oblique angle to the villa, running parallel to a gravel flowerbed with succulents before ending at a section of wooden decking covered by a lightweight awning. The outside areas are designed to physically distinguish and separate the villa from the ordinary surrounding buildings. They also help conceal from view the contemporary elements and refined composition that balance and bring rigour to the elevations, such as, the varied use of transparency across the windows and balcony parapets, the wall sections clad with wooden panels and the light walls that form a reverberating background for the facades. The organisation of the interiors shows a clear search for polarity. The core is the metal staircase that joins the three floors of the villa and adds to the interiors by being a light, aerial artefact extending into the large ground-floor living area. The staircase is 'encased' in glazed walls, becoming a dynamic, defining architectural feature alongside the double-height volumes that make the living areas large and spacious. The rigorous and essential interiors have a poetic feel where the architectural style is characterised by balance and elegance. Here, once again, the connections with the striking landscape outside are a two-way process, but the views are determined quite naturally from the inside. The interior layout is built on the idea of carefully considered architectural cores -the stairs, the living area, the details - that have almost pictorially disguised touches and where crisp geometrical lines show the value of distinctions. The different visual perspectives run into each other, both within the villa and looking from the inside onto the landscape, producing transparent overlaps that bring a perfectly balanced, refined atmosphere to the living area.

Francesco Pagliari