The Villa Roccamare project is important because it addresses the urgent need for architecture to adapt to the dictates of nature, increasingly central to contemporary living. It springs from personal experience of this place, a well-known resort in Tuscany, and its fundamentals: sea, pinewood, the colours and fragrances of the Mediterranean maquis. Villa Roccamare is a long horizontal structure that recovers and re-interprets the pre-existing building from the 1960s. Its landscape was created by transitions: between piasentina stone, glass and cement, between solids and voids, between undulating sands and the symmetry of the building, hinged together solely by a transparent and mobile delimitation, a long window providing light and ventilation. The structure made it possible to use beams spanning 25 metres and has all the windows and doors facing the sea, transforming the interiors into a stunning patio. The rigidity of the cement that characterised the previous building quickly made way for a plastic body with a strong personality. Thanks to the expressivity of this material and its versatility, Villa Roccamare is contemporary, linear and minimal, and perfectly sustainable in its surroundings. The Villa has a simple physiognomy concealing the tenacity and rigour that determined the choice of construction solutions and the definition of all the details. The project revives and ennobles relationships with nature and the rhythms of people living here. The exteriors balance the interiors, where the breeziness of the marine landscape is conjured up by a sensory architecture that evokes natural elements in the choice of materials, such as the lava stone wall tiles in the greens and blues of the pinewood and the Mediterranean. Perception of flavours and smells is also heightened by its westward orientation, favouring ventilation, represented here by a Maremma diorama in the internal courtyard of the first building. The centuries old olive tree increases the oxygen level, and the cool breezes pass between the structures as if tunnelling through the Mediterranean maquis to reach the horizon. This landscape within the landscape dialogues with the village scattered amidst the maritime pines, characterised by modernist architecture from the 1960s whose concepts of living Villa Roccamare seeks to render newly contemporary. To take the very idea of “habitation” to a higher level: this is the objective pursued by establishing a profound relationship with the place, a subject as important as the customer in our project. The environment suggested technical solutions as well as the idea of a linear dwelling that blends into its background and represents the new idea of luxury and residential comfort in a heavenly corner of Tuscany.
NEATSTUDIO was founded in 2016 in Florence, by Giorgio Cerrai architect, with the aim of building on previous professional experiences and beginning a period of individual exploration into the process of design. Quality of the end result, formal balance and the search for a harmonious dialogue with the environment have from the outset been the founding elements of the study and practice of architecture. The main focus of Neatstudio is currently on new buildings and renovations for residential use, defining construction details, lighting, and interior and exterior furnishings.
As the firm’s workload has grown, Neatstudio has been joined by collaborators with other skills and areas of expertise, making it more incisive and effective. It is against this backdrop that the relationship has been consolidated with Debora De Carlo and Francesca Pepe architects, who in time have become an integral part of the team.