Y Italy
J U DY BA RO U C H
Architecture sans frontières
ALESSANDRO MAGI GALLUZZI
In an agricultural region of central Italy is a ‘playful’ house inspired by the work of Australia’s Glenn Murcutt
ou wouldn’t expect to find a Glenn Murcutt-inspired house deep in the agricultural Le Marche region of central Italy. Yet this is where the acclaimed University of Florence-trained architect Simone Subissati created Border Crossing House, on a small, fenceless ridge overlooking a picturesque, hilly borrowed landscape of neighbouring fields cultivating everything from wheat and barley to sunflowers and olives. “Glenn Murcutt was one of the architects who made me fall in love with architecture,” Subissati says. “His houses are ‘rough’ and refined at the same time, with the spaces integrating with the environment.” Yet this house is no Murcutt clone. Subissati’s work is also informed by the Italian Radical design movement of the late ’60s and ’70s, as well as his own poetic creativeness. “Border Crossing House follows a construction principle where the individual parts remain legible, as in a building game kit,” he says. “It’s a complex simplicity.” For their first home, cardiac surgeon Carlo Zingaro and scrub nurse Eugenia Morgano briefed Subissati and his colleague Alice Cerigioni to create a two-storey house for themselves and their two young children within a large green belt. On the wishlist were three bedrooms and two bathrooms, with one incorporating a hammam and the other a micro pool. The two floors were to be connected via a prominent staircase, and there were to be views from the first floor down to the ground floor across to an outdoor lap pool. The architects, who work between Milan and Ancona, sourced the land and then Subissati designed a linear, semi-transparent residence running from east to west, covered by an asymmetrical, double-pitched roof. “It’s a light, flexible space that appears as if it had always been there, just like the buildings in the rural tradition of my grandparents – rustic places where people both lived and worked,” says Subissati. “The long and compact form allows a simultaneous vision of the two sides of the ridge from any point; it symbolises the border, a threshold to be crossed. This, and exploration of permeability, is the main theme of the project.” The building can easily be traversed at more than one point: from the patio entrance, from the living area and from the bathroom/spa. Downstairs, on both external and certain internal walls, zinc-coated iron cladding is painted with an anti-rust primer. “Tools and agricultural vehicles are traditionally painted in this red colour,” Subisatti says, adding that as a further link to the pastoral landscape, perennial grasses were planted to envelop the exterior. The barn-like house is composed of three parts. The ground 36
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floor with its double-height living spaces is the most open, visually transparent and engaged with the external environment. Air flows freely through nine doors that open on the south side, and through six on the north side. They’ve been designed in conjunction with a riblike pilaster system that is structural but also metaphorical, splitting the building to provide a chiaroscuro effect that conceals the glass and allows the doors to remain open without obstruction. The lighter, white first floor, which almost seems suspended, is more sheltered and contains the private rooms. Small kaleidoscopic windows with mirror-lined sides present intriguing optical effects, magnifying the landscape according to the distance from which the viewer looks. This level also features what the architects refer to as a “hybrid” area that functions as an additional living space and includes a plant-filled winter garden. Open plan, it is roofed by a light frame with a perforated and pre-tensioned membrane that appears translucent from the outside during the day but is transparent from inside. At night, it glows enchantingly like a lantern. Details such as the staircase and upper walkway balustrading are fabricated from chicken wire to provide maximum transparency without resorting to glass, and to continue the leitmotiv of materials that are simple, basic and not overtly on trend. The duo of colours – red and white – that distinguishes the two main sections of the building continues inside. The interior contains only minimal furnishings, and the white-stained ash cooking zone and bathroom vanity are freestanding. “Being detached from the perimeter walls makes for a different style of space management and closely links with the philosophy of the project: borderless, uncluttered and with an ease of circulation,” says Subissati. As with Murcutt, sustainability is a priority for the architect. While the area’s climate is mild for most of the year, summers can sometimes be extremely hot and winters very cold. With inclusions such as double glazing, concrete flooring downstairs (and underground water tanks), the house is thermally efficient in all seasons, providing for thermal gain in the colder months, and a natural cooling system thanks to cross-ventilation and a chimney effect for the hottest days. Subissati stresses that this was never meant to be a luxury home, although it does provide all the contemporary amenities. “We wanted a playful house that extends beyond all the conventional rules,” he says. And with Italy in the grip of COVID-19, for these medicos, their rural sanctuary provided a most welcome retreat.
Clockwise from above: Chicken wire balustrade of the upper walkway; the barn-like house in its landscape; the lap pool; kaleidoscopic windows on the first floor; the minimally furnished, double-height living space on the ground floor
THE WEEKEND AUSTRALIAN
| JUNE 13-14, 2020
