Apulia House

PRIVATE HOUSE DESIGN PROJECT IN MATTINATA, APULIA, ITALY

ABOUT
THIS PROJECT
A modern style villa inspired by traditional Apulian houses Private residence project in Puglia – Italy (IT). The area where this villa will rise is located in the Apulian countryside within a land planted with almond trees, in an area mostly characterized by old country houses. The villa meets the customer’s needs and is spread over two levels, one of which is underground for use as a garage; the main floor of the house is raised with respect to the altitude of the countryside of 90 cm and develops with a total floor area of ​​180 square meters to exploit all the possible volume granted by the building regulations of the place; the external part, which surrounds the house, extends for about 446 square meters, of which about 300 square meters are occupied by the raised garden like the house.
WHAT
WE DID IT
The design of the villa responds to the needs of a modern home but with a style that is attentive to the characters of the local tradition. The cleanliness of the architectural language and the skilful play of volumes is a clear reference to the Mediterranean architecture that characterizes most of the houses in this area and that is declined in some very famous housing types such as the trullo or the farm. The layout of the villa re-proposes the layout of the house with an agricultural courtyard of Mediterranean tradition; with this it shares the enclosure, consisting of a high and fortified wall, which has few openings, and a single large central space, in our case represented by the large garden in front of the house, overlooked by the entrances and common areas of the villa. Inside the enclosure there are the two main bodies of the house, 5.90 meters on each side by almost 16 meters in length, which intersect orthogonally: one transversal houses the living area with the common living spaces and the service rooms, the the other longitudinal houses the sleeping area with private living spaces. The larger windows, which characterize the architecture of the façade, are located in the living area and along the corridor that distributes the sleeping area: we preferred a sequence of smaller openings, organized on a double overlapping row, to large glass surfaces. of windows, those below that can be opened, those that are high fixed. This solution seemed to us to be the ideal solution for obtaining a hole-punching effect on the facades that would allow for a wide illumination of the rooms, and at the same time, to adopt a solution that is more adherent to the traditional type and less obvious than that of the sliding window. The other rooms are characterized by French doors or windows of normal size (60×60 cm or 120×240 cm)
HOW
WE DID IT
The house respects all the requests made by our customer: on the ground floor, in the transversal body, there is the entrance with a large wardrobe and a closet, a 14 sqm study, a service bathroom with laundry, the open kitchen with island and breakfast top, the adjacent dining area that houses a table for 6-8 people and the large living area, separated from the dining room by means of sliding wings. The living area is enclosed in a space of about 28 square meters in which the wall equipped with the TV faces each other on one side, while on the opposite side a large rustic-style fireplace around which the relaxation area is gathered. In the longitudinal body there are two single bedrooms (each about 14 square meters), the main bathroom and a double bedroom (about 15 square meters), designed as an independent apartment, equipped with a wardrobe room (about 7 square meters) and a small toilet complete with shower and sink. On the ground floor there is also the staircase that leads to the basement, with dimensions equal to those of the house above, and where there is a room used as a cellar, or room for the use of the technological systems of the house, an adjacent room for storage and two large double boxes. The access of the cars takes place from the external vehicle ramp that leads to the pit lane and is also accessible on foot as it has a side pedestrian path. The large area outside the house is characterized, to the south west, by the raised garden overlooked by the transverse body of the living area and the longitudinal body of the sleeping area; to the north east we find the outdoor area equipped with a solar pergola (almost 50 square meters) where the dining table for 10-12 people and the barbecue area are comfortably placed; adjacent to the pergola there is a small green space, treated as a lawn, with a single almond tree in the center, surrounded by high perimeter walls and which is configured as a secret garden, enclosed in a private space, where it is possible to see only the sky or to see the surrounding almond grove through the only opening facing north. The interiors of the villa are characterized by warm-toned colors and traditional Apulian stone materials, both in the choice of the internal Trani stone floors and in the external ones, for which the materials chosen vary from the Lecce stone laid to earth along the external walkways up to the limestone used to delimit the base of the house and the dry stone wall of the raised floor where the garden is located. The exposed bleached wooden beams of the ceiling help to recreate the idea of ​​a rustic, familiar environment, attentive to tradition. For the external facades, a simple white lime plaster was used, while the roofing is made of natural Apulian limestone tiles.