Casa mia
Casa mia
Transformation of an apartment, Torino 2008
This project deals with a dilemma.
An apartment on the third floor of a palace from the 17th century is the new home of one of MARC’s founders. It needs complete remodeling, to adapt to the “intensive” use by his recently enlarged family.
Can a home be “warm” as the family requests without losing clarity? Can it be “cozy” being rational and flexible at the same time? Maybe, if one leaves any formal obsession.
The project frees the three big original spaces from all recent interventions, revealing rich decorated wooden ceilings. It concentrates several new functions (two bathrooms, a laundry, a bedroom, a changing-room) inside three dense volumes of different heights, leaving the corridors, the kitchen, the living room and the children’s bedroom open.
But the project tries to lower the usual contrast between new architecture and ancient spaces: all walls are treated the same way, with no distinction between new and old. The volumes come out of the existing walls rather than being independent objects. Only little details mark their difference from the rest.
New constructions concentrate in two of the three original rooms. The big living room, instead, is expressly left free, almost empty, for playing, running and partying.
Designers: Subhash Mukerjee, Michele Bonino
Collaborator: Tommaso Rocca
Contractors: MakeIt snc, Ricardo Rios
Client: private
Surface: 130 sqm
Photos: Beppe Giardino