Overlooking the village of Casamaccioli, “A Casa Vanella” is
a guests house which is part of a natural landscape in the heart of Corsica, in
font of three major summits, Monte Cinto, the Paglia Orba, and Cima a i Mori.
The program aimed at creating common spaces, a dining room, chillout areas, in
extension of the main house which welcomes the guests’ bedrooms. The bias was
to detach from the house, to place themselves in the back of the plot of land
against a retaining wall in front of the village and the mountains chain. The
extension is in the background of the “Casone” (family house) which occupies
the center of the plot. Our reflexion was led by the concern to take root in a
site without imposing a gesture, but with the will to highlight its
specificities. Illuminated by the western light, A Casa Vanella is in the
middle of a unique and timeless landscape. Walls made of granite and schist
tuck the plots composed by chestnuts. These majestic trees dazzle us throughout
the seasons until they reveal their silhouettes during winter. Like an
inhabited retaining wall, the building frames the main components of the
landscape. As a result, three bores are oriented to each one of the summits.
The building becomes landscape, it becomes a place of contemplation, where the
sun puts in echo space and summits. Every night of the year, the light of the
sunset makes these places unique.
Through this landscape in constant evolution, we have wanted to create a
project proposing a duality. A duality inside/outside. A first look at the
project makes you feel it has no opening; it appears like a thickness of
granite. Then, as we go along, we discover that this wall is going to open
itself, to fragment, to enable the view and let the light in, in a controlled
and measured way.
In a different way, the project is playing with time through the use of
materials like concrete and stone. Indeed, the meeting of these elements enable
us to tell a story regarding this site, also remind us of another time and
know-how. Concrete is used in its truest way forming posts and lintels. Stone
is used to fill the empty spaces of the structure. Inside, the lime plasters
integrate and hide the technical elements. The architecture tends to integrate
the project in order to make it disappear in a mineral mass, and lets exist the
main building “ Casone”. The project intends to travel through time developing
an emotion between tradition, landscape and architecture.
CREDITS
Architectural Design: Orma Architettura
Building Date: 2016
Project Area: 85 sqm
Project Location: Casamaccioli, France
Photographs: Orma Architettura
NATURAL STONE:
WALLS AND EXTERIOR FLOORINGS
GRANITE AND SCHIST
