Casa Barbieri

The term housescape, coined by the designer to describe this private residence, is the key to understanding it. In the author’s words, the residence guarantees privacy but also creates the illusion of more space, weaving open and closed, constructed and natural spaces. It is, in effect, a house on a quest to become part of the landscape itself given the symbiotic relationship between the two.
The architecture is organized into separate parallelepiped blocks, suspended in relation to the surrounding ground level and seemingly lightweight to the eyes of the outside visitor despite a raw, natural outer stone shell, setting the theme for the majority of the stone’s use.  Its widespread use is in part betrayed by the pieces contained in the ashlars above, with relatively reduced thicknesses and subtle color differences between the ashlars and the mortar, creating the finest joints.
The point of the whole operation where the ashlars masonry reaches its maximum expressivity is in the aspects that face each other at a short reciprocal distance between the two main volumes, with significant interposition of transparent crystals and small layers of steel between them. The crisp combination, without mediation, between the materials and their more obvious perceptible characteristics, enhances the pronounced differences between them, offering the resident a dynamic and lively environment. The interior-exterior space takes shape and materializes. It connects the originally separated volumes by the richness of the facilities: terraces, a swimming pool, paths, large natural surfaces, wrapped around each other as well as linked through the assertive horizontal lines.
From the inside of the residence, within the intimacy of the home, the constructed telescope, turned toward the countryside, projects the energies channeled inside the rooms to the outside.  The stone helps these energies flow both from the outside and in along walkways that reveal surprising views.