Summer residence in Tuscany. Material volume in the pine forest

At the end of the 1950s Giancarlo De Carlo drew up an urban plan characterized by the abundant presence of the landscape, in which the buildings, surrounded by dunes dotted with maritime pines, myrtles and holm oaks, have a strong individual character and are connected by free paths that follow the evolution of the landscape. In this respect, the Fiorido Massimo Associati architectural studio is renovating a summer residence built in the mid-1960s.

The poor architectural quality of the existing building is an opportunity to consider the qualities of the landscape in which the building fits, lying on a sand dune, surrounded by pine trees located in unique places, often very close to the walls

The project outlines a twofold perspective: on one hand, the need to identify a balance between the natural surroundings of the building and the morphological and chromatic values of the place where it is located; on the other hand, the desire to place the features of the interiors within the framework of a tradition that focuses on comfort, domesticity and suitability

An ideal longitudinal axis, which runs through the entire building, makes it possible to find a convergence between two significant operational aspects: first, the redefinition of internal space, which is expressed in the sequence of rooms in close relationship with each other and with the surrounding landscape; secondly, the identification of the characteristics of the building in a new morphology that is natural and archetypal at the same time and finds its constituent feature in the horizontal sediment

From this twofold approach comes the criterion of remodelling the openings in the volume of the building, almost all of which are different from each other, but constructed taking into account both the sequence of the internal environments and the relationship between the room and the outside, as well as the balance of the building's masspuncture ratio

The material used for the external cladding, a striped travertine, helps to make the morphology of the building look like an ideal unitary mass, the result of different sedimentations, while also conferring chromatic assonance with the surrounding landscape. The limited range of materials used - travertine which is also used in the stone cladding of the interiors, plaster, teak wood and used to give continuity to the internal and external horizontal planes - contributes to making the house a presence in the pine forest which has a refined ambiguity: while it offers a comfortable refuge from the external world, at the same time it introduces the surrounding landscape into it. Massimo Fiorido Associati, an architectural studio, underlines the archetypal character of the intervention in the new morphology of the built mass, which highlights the double pitch of the roof and the compactness of the two end faces