Villa Alice, a unique family house in the Padan Plain

VILLA A was built in the rural area of the Padan Plain, in Bagnolo Mella, near Brescia. It’s a large three-floor single-family house surrounded by a cozy garden and a swimming pool. The villa has a regular plan centered on an interior patio which marks the transition from the living area to the bedrooms, thus recreating volumes and height differences. The outlines of this space are defined by huge windows which bring natural light into the heart of the house, allowing the viewer to look up from different angles, catching a piece of sky in an unexpected but intimate way. From this central core, on the ground floor, the south-facing living area of the house develops. The spacious living room is made even bigger by a double-level floor and enhanced in its beauty by a painted iron custom-made staircase. This sculptural element which defines verticality and spatial lines leads to the loft, becoming, progressively, decor and an element of connection between floors. The staircase takes on the role of visual creator, suggesting vertical and horizontal directions to the eye. Merging with the patio, it makes up the generating core of the house from which, successively, the convivial space of the dining room and a kitchen with a big panoramic window develop. The window closes the external perimeter of the building and opens it up to the garden. Accompanying our view towards these spaces is also the single-pitch roof that, from the entrance and through the living area, leads to the kitchen, the dining room, and the loft. The bedrooms, including the master bedroom, the kids’ bedrooms, and their service areas, are situated on the north-facing side of the house. Around the patio is the main circulation of the building, also in the more private areas of the house. In this way, the connecting spaces enjoy a soft natural light in all seasons. From the loft, intended as a place to study and relax, you can reach the west-facing terrace. A little balcony overlooks the patio from which, over the covering, you can spot the top of the trees of the surrounding landscape. In the basement, there is a playing room for the kids, a garage, service areas and technical rooms. For each indoor space of the house there is a similar outdoor space, with different functions and levels of privacy. Outside the living area there is a small, well positioned shady lounge area. Outside the dining area there is a large porch for family lunches and dinners with friends, where the enchanting sunset light is attenuated by the depth of the porch. Outside the master bedroom there is an intimate loggia, raised higher than ground level and hidden from view by a cleverly designed “green curtain”. These outdoor but well delimited spaces make up the ground floor space. Switching between solids and voids, between walls and big windows, taken away from the outdoor Siberian larch cladding, the balance of shapes and the different times of the day create an interplay of light and shadows, the passing of hours, months, and seasons. These contrasting elements are emphasized further by night lighting, which is discreet but clear, hidden in the thickness of the cladding substructure. The outdoor surface is the unifying element of the whole space, determining its shapes in a clear way. Above the greenery, the volume created by the sloped roof going from the entrance to the loft studiously emerges. Its metal Tecu® Oxid covering with a marked double bending placed at irregular intervals characterizes the whole mass, including the sloped roof. Here, a specifically designed recess fully integrates the large surface of photovoltaic panels in the covering, thus mitigating its visual impact. The same material was used for the intradoses of the openings towards the outside, directly in contact with the wood of the cladding, in order to highlight further the dichotomous relationship between the elements: solid-void, light-shadow, opaque-transparent, vegetal-mineral. The interior of the house is characterized by this duality, too: the light colour of the walls and of the wall furniture contrasts the dark colour of the emerging elements such as the dining table and the kitchen island, the sofas and the designer pieces of furniture that fill the space, almost sprouting from the floor or coming down from the ceiling, as in the case of lighting, as cluster points of attention and emotion. The window and door frames and the external metal venetian blinds are also dark, as opposed to the light tint of the curtains. The three-layer durmast floor unifies all spaces, and its plane finish contributes to soften the clear lines of the indoor space, giving a warm and vivid touch to the whole house. The white painted iron staircase, which is also a bookcase in the development of a non-conventional parapet protecting from the change in height, was specifically designed for this villa. Its floor-to-ceiling structure outlines the space, providing the living room with clear but evanescent lines, both in colour and in thickness. The systems consist of a heat pump powered by the photovoltaic system placed on the roof of the villa, serving both for the underfloor heating and cooling systems. The thick walls, the depths of the porches and the blinds protect the house from summer heat and they optimise winter solar supply. Together with the materials chosen, a Mechanical Ventilation System contributes to the indoor air quality of this unique family villa that wonderfully merges indoor and outdoor spaces.