CASA LEVIS
EXTENSION OF A TYPICAL TWO STOREY COUNTRYSIDE HOUSE, BIELLA – ITALY. SQM. 100
Project team: Andrea Marcante, Valter Camagna, Massimiliano Camoletto with Davide Volpe
Collaborator: Luca Ramello
Photographer: Emilio Conti
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The location on the steep slope with an orchard and an uninterrupted view of the Alps, brought the idea to organize new spaces as a series of “filters” that would attenuate the passage from the building's introverted spaces towards open spaces of the surrounding landscape.
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The aim was achieved by adopting an architectural language inspired by the traditional vertical and horizontal wood panel assembling techniques, reminders of balconies and loggias.
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Architecture is thus not only a technical mean of defining space but also a way to perceive a place through the senses.
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The external world becomes filtered: landscape (considered a product of human mind) is imported inside, treated as a sequence of framed pictures emerging from the openings of the building and enhanced by the “optical pathway” ending up in a large glass wall on the western side of the house. On this side the full size two sliding door glass panels substitute the partition wall and clad the concrete wall as well.
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The glass wall, by creating reflections, wraps up the interior that in turn riemerges outdoors.
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The house acts as a filter for the perception of space, memory and present. Rythm and sequence of the wooden planks anticipate a future extension of the existing building.
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The borders and limits are not clear-cut; emphasis falls on the intermediary space, something quite similar to the Japanese “shakkei” technique (“borrowed landscape”), a technique of incorporating elements of the surrounding landscape by making use of background set in a relationship to the foreground (interior one) and concealing what lies-in-between.
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It gives a visible form to the relationship between nature and culture.
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