Set in a location offering plenty of green space combined with close proximity to the town centre, Villa Cedar, designed by Domus Gaia, a Friuli-based company specialising in green building, is based on the principles of organic architecture, which explore and enhance the relationship with the natural surroundings.
The orientation of the rooms and the design solutions used for the home optimise its performance in terms of functionality, energy-efficiency and bioclimate. Villa Cedar is a fusion of various elements, based on the transparency of glass, the warmth of wood, the solidity of stone and the modernity of steel and textured plaster.
Offering over 250 sq.m of floor space, the home is built on two storeys connected by a visually striking entrance. The anthracite colour of the steel staircase and stairwell provide a distinct contrast with the high level of natural light coming in through the skylight.
The ground floor has an open-plan design, which encompasses a living-room, dining-room and kitchen, arranged around a corner measuring almost 10 metres, offering direct communication with the portico and garden outside. On the first floor, there are five bedrooms, including a suite, two children's bedrooms and their respective bathrooms.
Even the lighting plays an essential role in the villa, where the brief was to maximise the inflow of natural light, through the intelligent layout of the apertures in each room, so as to ensure correct, amplified filtering. When darkness falls, good lighting design makes up for the absence of natural light, and reflective plays of LED lighting help create a soft, cosy atmosphere, especially in the living area.
The villa took just seven months to build, using the X-Lam construction system together with natural insulators such as wood fibre and cellulose flakes. Close attention was also paid to permeability to water vapour, which plays an important role in the long-term preservation of the building, and to the triple-glazed wood and aluminium windows, with triple contact surface and triple seal between leaf and frame, so as to ensure first-class energy performance.
This helps put the villa in energy class A, because it is also equipped with a heat-pump-operated underfloor heating system, backed up by one thermal solar and one photovoltaic system, so requires no connection to the mains gas supply at all.
A controlled mechanical ventilation system manages cool air, by air conditioning and dehumidifying each room and recovering 90% of the heat energy. The building thus benefits from constantly fresh, filtered air, uniform temperatures and controlled humidity, all with a minimum of energy consumption.