Excerpt: Un taglio netto, a refurbishment project by Filippo Bombace, makes a conscious ‘clean break’ with the past, ensuring that the users could experience the home free from any references to the past. The design incorporates a modernist aesthetic, creating a living area with an adjoining kitchen and a dining area. A spiral staircase dominates the spatiality and coordinates with the design tones.
Project Description
[Text as submitted by architect] The project involved the remodelling of a two-storey flat in the north of Rome, inside a beautiful 1970s building, characterised already in its ante operam (before construction) state by many detailing and furnishing solutions that are still relevant today, e.g. the Guzzini ‘focus’ lamps, the full-height doors with glass fanlights, the double height that characterises the living room, the windows that differ in size, geometry and position, the travertine thresholds, without overhangs or dowels, detached from the plaster by a simple ‘scuretto’, to name but a few.
The 4th floor obviously finds its highlight in the double-height spatiality, while the 5th floor suffers somewhat from the various interventions over the years, showing a relative geometric disorder and a less incisive design hand. With this corollary of accessories and equipment that characterised the home, the designer was nevertheless asked to make a deliberate and conscious ‘clean break’ with the past, so that the couple with child who inherited the home could experience it free of all references to the past.
At this point, therefore, a design was defined that fits well into the modernist flavour that characterised the building. Thus the raised area used as a living room was eliminated, the bedrooms were redistributed, the kitchen was opened onto the nearby dining area, and an attempt was made to connect the 4th floor more closely with the level above (where a dining/wellness area was created) by opening up the long side of the double-height room onto the level below. Obviously, the renovation of the bathrooms completes the whole.
The real heart of the home remains, of course, the living area with the adjoining kitchen, which ‘trespasses’ into the dining area, which has been moved to the double-height part. And here the spatiality is dominated by the staircase, configured as a spiral staircase, coordinated with the design tones.
A different table and a double-sided island sofa finally furnish the living room, with the TV point set up on the mirrored wall, the only element surviving the ‘clean cut’ made with the original layout.
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