Login
Registered users
The theme of the contemporary Italian “Villa” is a vast and tangled subject in which it is easy to lose one’s way. There is clear uninterrupted historical thread from the “rustic” Roman villa through to the much later concept of a villa for “villeggiatura”, or holidaying, and then to what we now understand as a villa. For the Romans, the villa was a building designed to colonize the wilderness, the center around which untamed land was put to the plough to produce food for the towns, some of them real metropolises. Fast forward a millennium or so, and the European bourgeoisie turned the “villa” into a prestigious country residence, a place of elegance and leisure surrounded by a now tamed and orderly countryside. Today, a villa signifies a detached residence, which despite the considerable social prestige we often attach to it, frequently has to contend with surroundings marred by unbridled development. This at least is often the case in Italy, and to a greater or lesser extent, in the rest of what we know as the Western world. The public image of the inhabitant of a “villa” is of someone who wants it known he is well placed on the social ladder. At the same time though, the villa dweller is concerned with privacy and protection from prying eyes - a requirement that can be a problem when the villa is a showcase as is increasingly the case today for all residential building. Architecture practice 3ndy Studio has contributed to the theme of the villa with a residence in the lowlands of the Veneto region that gives modern expression to the considerations above. Their villa is a closed self-referential system, which at the same time sends out a very precise message to the outside world: look, this is something special. In this case, the materials making up the architectural finishes are part of the vocabulary used to send out this message; its grammar involves innovative lemmas and a very elaborate...
Digital
Printed
And the world goes green
Benedetto Camerana (Camerana&Partners)
Benedetto Camerana's editorial critique go back over the path which started with green architecture and has led to the green economy....
The John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design at the University of Toronto
NADAAA
The Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape and Design at the University of Toronto was awarded to NADAAA, which is making a name for itself with a...
Northern Italian Chiaroscuro
Botticini + Facchinelli ARW
Claw House in Crevignane, a little town not far from Lake Iseo close to Brescia – appears a successful amalgam of the different sensitivities of ARW...
