The Inhabited Roccolo Private House

Press Kit

Unique Properties

The Inhabited Roccolo is a fascinating contemporary reinterpretation of a typical building of the Lombard landscape, designed to escape the stress of the urban world, where aesthetic ideals are sublimated in the modesty of simple forms and natural materials, while leaving complexity to nature around us. A vertical place that connects the earth and the cosmos through our souls.

Dimensions & Packaging

The new building uses only 332.13 square meters of the 425.69 of the existing building: it occupies a coverage area of 112.32 square meters with a total residential area of 332.13 square meters distributed over 4 levels (ground floor 119.40 square meters; first floor 87.99 square meters; second floor 78.67 square meters; third floor attic 46.07 square meters). The remaining 93.56 square meters are used for the reconstruction of the ruin for use as a shelter for agricultural tools and for the maintenance of the lot.

Tags

home, clusone, italy, edoardo milesi, roccolo, clusone, home design

Production Technology

Reinforced concrete and wood for the structures, natural wood, corten steel and titanium zinc for the coatings.

Design Challenge

A contemporary reinterpretation of a typical building of the Lombard landscape, designed to escape the stress of the urban world, where aesthetic ideals are sublimated in the modesty of simple forms and natural materials, while leaving complexity to nature around us. The project does not represent a simple mimetic operation, but a refined integration between the Roccolo and the surrounding territory.

Project Duration

The design project started in January 2015 and finished in June 2016 with the start of construction, which is finished in December 2017.

Operation Flow

A place designed to escape the stress of the urban world, where aesthetic ideals are sublimated in the modesty of simple forms and natural materials, while leaving complexity to nature around us.

Research

The project starts from the impossibility, for geological reasons, to preserve the existing building and from the awareness of the importance of maintaining the necessary human protection: we are in fact in the presence of a place where the landscape value is the result of a long work and constant in the application of the traditional art of gardening aimed at fowling.
The new construction is inspired by the "roccolo" typology, and is reinterpreted in a contemporary key: a typological reworking of the mountain bird catcher translated into home of holidays, which maintains the spatial setting at the center of the tree plant, created and modeled for fowling, but moved a few meters away from the existing block.
The new building appears as a fundamental part of the landscape recovery and a rural culture typical of the Lombard Alps and pre-Alps.
The project restores the physiognomic characteristic of the roccolo: a semicircle of hornbeams in a double row with a central corridor covered by the intertwining of the branches, which forms the supporting framework of the walls and roof. Inside the semicircle there is the so-called thrown, that is the set of plants on which the birds perch, to descend even lower attracted by the berries of the grove, formed by shrubs producing berries.
Clinging to the tower building that slightly overlooks the trees, is the toll booth, an overhanging volume, containing the various functions, where the winder houses and hides: on the ground floor the semi-dark shelter for decoy birds, just above the kitchen and bedrooms, at the top the windows from which to throw the bogies.
The toll booth, a construction of masonry and wood, is camouflaged by mixed climbers and ground coverings, ivy, wisteria and vines. The cracks in the toll booth, from which the movements of the birds are scrutinized, alternate with wider openings with different openings functional for hunting and birding.
The main feature of the toll booth is the morphological discontinuity of the fronts, made up of heterogeneous merged and projecting volumes, padded with different materials: concrete, larch wood left to natural oxidation, short steel and opaque and pre-oxidized zinc-titanium sheet.
The facades have different openings depending on the type of material with which they were made: horizontal cracks on the wooden ones, small square openings, partly glazed and partly closed by wooden anchors / stakes for climbing plants, on the exposed concrete, glass panes in the metal walls. All the glazed parts are suitably set back and shielded to avoid glare and reflections in the landscape and the fixtures are all positioned on the internal line of the perimeter walls with a retractable frame.

Inspiration

To live in a bird catcher hut means to know how to be amazed at nature, to love it and to learn to know it through the concept of emptiness. A formidable source of inspiration that combines tradition with a contemporary look to the future and reminds us of the transience of life.

Image Credits

Image #1: Photographer Ezio Manciucca, East Elevation, 2018.
Optional image #2: Photographer Ezio Manciucca, Entrance and Dining room, 2018.
Optional image #3: Photographer Ezio Manciucca, Master Room, 2018.
Optional image #4: Photographer Ezio Manciucca, Kitchen, 2018.
Optional image #5: Photographer Ezio Manciucca, Attic Living, 2018

Patents

Copyrights belong to Studio Edoardo Milesi & Archos S.r.l.

Colors of The Inhabited Roccolo Private House

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