The project of "a house for an antimatter physicist" brings together many of the themes dear to us: the challenge of space, understood as the search for its maximum potential, but also the relationship with the existing. All seasoned with a passion for handmade and a certain inclination to playfulness and surprise.
"we always see the project as an opportunity to add elements to an existing text, not to rewrite it."
What was the client's request?
In one word, renewal. For the first time, well beyond the desire for novelty with which clients often present themselves, this renewal was motivated by a profound feeling: the redemption of an unhappy childhood lived within those same walls. The client is a person accustomed to lateral thinking (an antimatter physicist), the desires for space and comfort were a multitude: a large whirlpool tub for two, an alcove with private bathroom and dressing room, a second bathroom with shower, a study with a guest bed, a comfortable kitchen, a living room with a fireplace (!), a reading area and a genkan where you can leave your shoes as soon as you enter the house.
How did you envision treating the room and the bed?
When we think of the bedroom we like to refer to the intimate and protective spatiality of the alcove: a minimal and square space where you can take refuge from the stimuli of the outside world. But at the same time we also try to refer to the comfortable world of certain hotel suites, to be able to dream of being on vacation even when you are not. This is why we always try to propose a special relationship with the private bathroom, a place for self-care, and the comfort of a spacious walk-in closet, perhaps with a seat.
In this case, a simple piece of furniture, as long as the space of the room, adds several spatial devices in a single birch volume: the 3 steps leading to the bathroom, a large chest, a comfortable seat and a white metal clothing stand for the open part of the walk-through wardrobe. A sliding panel, of the same material, floats on this volume like a veil and hides behind it the spatiality of a private spa in green mosaic.
A large concrete porthole plays with the conventions of intimacy and modesty, connecting the bathtub with the bedroom. The white tones of the resin on the floor and the stuccoes, the warm colour of the birch and the frankness of the concrete artifacts form the calm and luminous background of the resting place.
What does the theme "rest" mean to you?
"The Bedroom"
Vincent van Gogh, Arles, October 1888,
Rest is more than sleep. Like many human needs, it extends beyond biological necessity. To the point that the thought that there are many actions we take to rest does not surprise us. Rest is not inactivity. And that is why it needs a spatiality that corresponds to it. The place of rest is therefore also the space in which to read poems, the space of yoga as soon as you wake up, the space of meditation.
All places or functions that seem neglected in the descriptions of housing offers. The theme of rest can be superimposed on the one most dear to us, comfort, understood as a moment of compensation or a break from the turmoil of exciting, productive and public life.
"Sweet dreams" we say: whether they are with closed eyes or with open eyes.
"Noon: Rest from Work" (after Jean-François Millet),
Vincent Van Gogh, 1890
