The Roman architecture firm Schiattarella Associati has been recently engaged with a project in the name of innovation and living spaces’ optimisation.
The “Cube House” is an experimental housing integrated into the context of the Rome Olympic Village, a historical Roman district built for the Olympic games in 1960 by the architects Moretti, Libera, Cafiero, Monaco and Luccichenti, and currently undergoing a significant renovation, thanks to the work of Zaha Adid and Renzo Piano that strongly marked its identity.
The architects have envisioned a house set into a 49 sq.m. (7x7m) square, consisting of a single open space with a central cube seamlessly dividing the diverse functional areas: living room, bedroom, kitchen and bathroom.
Several sliding panels sticking out of the central volume divide, if necessary, the whole open space and delimit individual rooms, also to guarantee the right privacy when required.
Inside the cube there is a large walk-in cabinet, while the outside is designed to integrate the different functions of each area: fridge and column oven on the kitchen side, toilet and bidet on the bathroom side, containers and shelving on the living room side.
The remaining furniture has been placed on the outside, and features a minimalist style made possible by the quantity of volumes and capacities obtained from the inside of the central cube. That resulted in some free spaces, coinciding with as many functional voids which help the light to enter the living areas. Even the glass sheets, laid out over some strategic sections of the unit, facilitate the creation of a luminous play of transparencies.
The chromatic contrast between the black parquet and the white colour of the cube and of the furniture creates an evocative effect. The central volume is covered with OSB panels, refined with lacquered white and wax, thus raising the prestige of a simple and economic eco-friendly material normally used for building sites’ barriers.
This project, nominated for the America Architecture Prize, blends in the core features of Schiattarella Associati’s work: a research activity on the configuration of free space and the continuous testing of new aesthetic and functional solutions.
Il minimalismo degli arredi restanti, posti all’esterno, reso possibile dalla quantità di volumi e capienze ricavati all’interno del cubo centrale, ha favorito la creazione di spazi liberi, corrispondenti ad altrettanti vuoti funzionali, utili a facilitare l’ingresso della luce nelle parti abitate. Anche le lastre di vetro disposte su alcune sezioni strategiche dell’unità contribuiscono a creare un luminoso gioco di trasparenze.
Suggestivo è il contrasto cromatico tra il parquet nero e il bianco del cubo e degli arredi. Il rivestimento del volume centrale è in pannelli OSB, rifiniti in laccato bianco e cerati, nobilitando così un semplice ed economico materiale ecologico normalmente utilizzato per le barriere dei cantieri.
Il progetto, candidato all’American Architecture Prize, incorpora gli elementi fondanti del lavoro di Schiattarella Associati: la ricerca sulla conformazione dello spazio vuoto e la sperimentazione di nuove soluzioni estetiche e funzionali.
*Credits:
Progetto: Cube House – Abitazione sperimentale
Luogo: Roma, Villaggio Olimpico
Committente: Privato
Design: Andrea Schiattarella, Carla Maresca (Schiattarella Associati)
