Lavanda in Valdarno by Filippo Bombace
Lavanda in Valdarno is a traditional country house located in San Giustino Valdarno, Italy, redesigned in 2022 by Filippo Bombace.
Description
A long renovation path to living weekends in the cool of ‘lavender in valdarno’.
From the long and passionate search for the ‘right’ property in the countryside surrounding the upper Valdarno in the vicinity of Arezzo, comes the building renovation project developed for a couple of Clients with the intention of defining the realization of two distinct bodies of the building, both distributed on two levels: one, larger, called the ‘villa’ and the other somewhat smaller, called the ‘barn’.
The former houses, in addition to the living spaces, the master and children’s bedrooms, while the ‘barn,’ with its volumetric autonomy becomes the valuable guest house.
If on the outside the local superintendence rightly requires the reconstruction of stylistic features and the use of local materials, on the inside the absence of particular constraints allows the Client’s desire for modernity to be given free rein, with which a careful balancing act between modern and rural is defined that outlines the character of the two distinct buildings.
Thus, in the barn we find the ‘classic’ tones of the area, the stone cladding, the terracotta flooring and ‘jellies’, the wooden floors and roof obviously left exposed, juxtaposed with more contemporary choices such as the staircase in bent corten sheet metal, the fireplace in pietra serena with minimal geometries and the various episodes of furniture, almost always characterized by the use of wood used, however, according to a contemporary language.
In the ‘villa’, on the other hand, it is definitely the great double-height spatiality that is the absolute protagonist of the dwelling, pierced by the suspended fireplace juxtaposed with the island sofa composition.
The staircase leading to the first floor instead splits its path with the use of the three materials that connote a bit the whole operation: the gray cement used for the resin flooring that characterizes the first steps, the elm wood used for almost all the new furniture and then the black lacquer of the last ramp.
On the other hand, the monumental severity of the complex staircase organism and the woodshed below is counterbalanced by the lightness of lavender-blue used for the lacquering of the dining area: combined with the elm wood, it draws the pleasant juxtaposition that grants the right serenity to the interior and exterior spaces of the property.
An efficient plant layout that takes advantage of all the possibilities offered today by technology to make the building organism as autonomous as possible then completes the comfort of the two dwellings.
Here today the owners can give vent to all their hobbies: cooking, taking care of the greenery, the vegetable garden, the beautiful swimming pool with a gray ‘pietra serena’ bottom, the right reward to a long and tiring path, carried out with obstinacy, which however today allows the couple to live the weekends in the coolness of the ‘lavender in valdarno’.
Photography courtesy Studio Bombace
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- by Matt Watts
