Project: Casa Vi
Architects: EV+A Lab Atelier d’architettura
Location: Sondrio, Province of Sondrio, Italy
Area: 807 sq ft
Year: 2015
Photographs by: Marcello Mariana
Casa Vi by EV+A Lab
Most people exaggerate when they decide on the size of the home that they will be building for themselves and end up with huge houses that have lots of spare room. If you intend to fill out that space in the future, then it is a good investment, but a lot of times half of the house remains unused. That is why some people carefully calculate what they need before they design their home. The owners of Casa Vi didn’t seem to need a large residence when they hired EV+A Lab Atelier d’architettura to transform an existing ruin into a residence in Sondrio, Italy.
From the architects: “This house is located in the surroundings of Sondrio on the Orobic Alps at about 1000 meters of altitude. The customer requests were to transform an existing ruin, realized in bricks of concrete, into a residence, that had the most solar radiation and lighting in the livingroom and, at the same time, a view toward the bottom of the valley. In those circumstances, after a careful analysis of the context, of the possibilities in terms of exposure, of the study of the sunlight and the study of technologies and of the values of the mountain architecture, I realized the project through a reinterpretations, in a modern key, of the construction techniques and materials used in the past.”
From the architects: “All that because I believe that mountain architecture is an emblematic example of sustainable architecture, using materials obtained from nature and, for obvious reasons, found in place. From a formal point of view the house refers to the rural houses: the only sloping roof, completely coated by stone and with no eaves. I worked first of all on the insulation and lighting because the Orobic Alpes are poorly exposed to irradiation, opting for the coverage to a single aquifer; this decision allowed me to raise the wall exposed to the north, inserting the 4 openings of equal size (2,30xh.1,40 cm), one a room on the first floor and two on the ground floor with a wonderful view on the Retic side of the Alps and, at the same time, achieving a double height on the kitchenette and dining area, illuminated from above through a skylight, flush covering, consisting of n.2 glass from 0.70×1,80 cm and n.3 glass from 0.70×0.90 cm. I obtained a environment lighted in a natural way, ensuring an economical energy saving and satisfying all the requests of the customer.”
