Slice of your pie
Transformation of a house, Torino 2004

The client had hardly any budget left for the remodeling, after paying for the purchase of this unique open space in an independent house in a picturesque courtyard, right below the 167 m high Mole Antonelliana – Torino’s best known monument.
The design is forced to take maximum advantage of the existing condition, living its roughness unchanged and concentrating all the limited resources and all the new functions in just a small “slice”.
The triple height slice includes the entrance, the existing stone staircase, the bathroom with a view toward the small kitchen, the bed and a bathtub right under the slanted roof. The rest is a big living and dining space for the young owner’s intense social life.

In the middle of the new density –and in the very center of the design section- is the fully glazed suspended shower: it somehow works as a lens, through which the view of the sky reaches the very lower levels along with natural light, generating new vertical relationships and multiplying the perspectives.
The two existing mezzanines and a recycled spiral staircase are preserved and connected with a perforated metal walkway, which is as narrow as possible to always allow the perception of the towering monument from the skylights between the wooden beams.