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The extension to this detached 1980s villa in Italy’s northern Lombardy region makes the whole complex take a quantum leap both aesthetically and energy efficiency terms.
Located in picturesque hills with views of the Alps on the horizon, the villa is set on several levels to conform to the steep terrain. Similarly, the grounds comprise sloping lawns and clumps of tall trees indigenous to the area.
The extension has been designed to blend with the original architecture and its context. The addition - a swimming pool and underneath it, a six-vehicle garage - is a long narrow parallelepiped volume standing on a flat stretch of land lying parallel to a steep slope rising immediately behind it. The same height and shape as the older section, the new unit blends effortlessly with its neighbour. Extensive glazed façades on both of the long sides of the swimming pool house give the building a less massive appearance and allow the changing light to filter inside. The glazing also offers views onto the grass-planted surrounds and makes the nearby grassy knoll an integral part of the interior. Just above this new building is a square-plan one-room volume entirely timber lined whose glazed frontage offers sweeping views over the countryside. This volume is reached from below by two ramps enclosed by a structure with broad glazed sides.
The most striking feature of the new swimming pool and small square volume is the dark-coloured,
pre-weathered zinc-titanium Rheinzink cladding covering the pitched roof and walls of the swimming pool and enveloping the panoramic box higher up. A high-performance ecological-friendly material, the cladding is here the key architectural feature, putting a unifying contemporary stamp on the whole edifice. The amalgam of new and old is reinforced by giving the older building a new zinc-titanium ventilated roof whose slats extend down to partly clad the walls. The plaster segments left uncovered have been painted...
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