Casa Città Giardino by PAROS architettura

The property sits within an environmentally delicate area, thus having to deal with numerous regulations. An introduction to this detective work amid regulations and bureaucracy comes from PAROS architettura. “We have always had great respect for Liberty architecture,” architect Simone Ricci explains, “the stylistic elements of which we believe are to be read as a language with strong roots in Rome, like the Roman language, rather than as an individual style in isolation. However, we understand the need to approach their transformation with great caution and attention, to carry out an operation that enhances the details of the place and does not distort its historical identity.”

Arch. Ricci also recalls how the codes of Liberty architecture are particularly sensitive to natural elements, such as plants. Enveloping trees surround the property, which played a fundamental role in the design choices of the PAROS founding partner. “The destruction of the trees surrounding the lot during renovation work seemed to us unacceptable, precisely in a building with a Liberty architectural identity. It would have been an act that was far removed from the philosophical attitude of this period in architecture, which is why we carried out the interventions without touching the vegetation, which will only benefit from the reworking of the underground installations.”

One delicate operation certainly concerned the upper floor of the building, as well as the roofs and façades, because the house is characterised by an extremely convenient and pleasant external connection (the terraces) with the surrounding landscape.

As for the garden, since the previous one had been substituted with the new building volume, after having informed the authorities, by hand-tapping the entire surrounding area with a metal rod, the studio proceeded with the development of the garden itself.

The uncovered ones were filled with pots, while those that had to be removed, such as when the bases of the new supporting pillars were present, were between the pines of the trees. In front of the tower, an underground room with multi-level glass covering completes the pavilion overlooking the natural green area. The glass-covered area also dedicates itself to the towers.

Due also to the presence of unexpected elements in the building yard, the studio was able to attach with concrete anchors to the building to limit the excavation for the repositioning of the pillars to support the entire structure above all.

The resumption of the stylistic elements of the Liberty era is the main theme of the entire project behind the choice of colours and materials. They clearly express the aesthetic codes of that period and allow us to integrate the soft and poetic strokes of Liberty without distorting them, without hiding them behind foreign stylistic elements.

“The balance between the historical and the contemporary in architecture is a delicate and fascinating challenge, one that I particularly enjoy tackling,” declares the architect and founder of PAROS architettura, Giorgia Ricci. “It is an opportunity to investigate the concept of the ‘palimpsest’ on which architectural codes are sometimes constructed, made of recognisable strata for the observer, both through the dialectic of the contrast between the different styles but also for elements that in themselves are not stylistically identifiable, such as simplicity in forms, colours and materials, and the scarcity of chromatic elements that is there but in itself does not impose recognisability.”

Specific overhangs at the window closures maintain the memory with the Liberty style that governs the entire building, while on the first level and the tops of the upper floor (the attic), the opening distorts the typological configuration but maintains its rich construction of bell in metal frames.

Also inside, the sharp design of the various elements such as the radiator, the kitchen flame, and the linear library on the upper floor cancels the historical memory of the Liberty codes, or at least the overturns them technocratically, close to the idea of 30s architecture with impulses in the linearity of forms, but they are close to Liberty for the way in which they dialogue in coexistence with them. The same enveloping representations of the rooms and spaces, the lighting fixtures, and the ornamental cuts of the metal staircases.

The dining room is the richest room in the house with the bright bow window, the stucco coffered ceiling, the ornate graniglia floors and the new made-to-measure bookcase designed by the studio. The coffered stucco ceiling also features a panel, the only one in the entire project, depicting plants preserved from the previous works, also in this much happier project.

For the kitchen, the study focused on simplicity with extremely clean lines, swimming pool tiles, light marble or steel cane finishes, a multilayer worktop with Pedro Silva ceramic finish.

An all-steel, matte black kitchen, interrupted only by the large kitchen worktop, the only surface of the kitchen with floral patterns, while the floor in the living area (in the paved areas) is made up of visually uniform graniglie with visual effects that repeat those of Liberty but without sentimentality. The play of colours of the personalisation of the uniformity of the graniglie plays on the monochromatic, on shifts from the whites of the grays to the greens when the light filters through the foliage of the pines directly in front of the windows.

“The desire to evoke the decorative richness typical of this architecture through a minimal imprint and great simplicity is, however, the true origin of the entire stylistic research of the decoration that we intended to achieve – concludes Giorgia Ricci – not to create automatisms of Renaissance degree but to reveal its expressive potential by expressing it according to geometries of neighbouring materials and cultures”.

To move to the sleeping area upstairs, the entrance is marked by the corridor leading to the central staircase, anchored in simple lines and material choices according to the most contemporary taste linked to materials such as steel and wood that accompany the ascents.

Contemporary architecture with simple lines chosen to complete the study in favour of the memory of Liberty itself, and colours and materials declined according to the natural elements of the location that immediately provided openings to space on the furnishings of the spaces themselves and on the furniture to reveal.

Thus, completed by new stylistic choices such as stone vein finishes, curtains integrated with floral patterns based on the same lines of the Liberty period, the rooms then show a linear decoration. Floors with large white grays combined to create complex graniglie with pink details and black seams, fine decoration on the wall strips, window and door jams decorating natural wood, and simple elegant metal furniture.

“This stylistic choice around colours and materials – continues Giorgia Ricci – was made primarily in parallel with the harmonious natural context that the site lends itself to, given the proximity of vegetation and trees outside, but also after thorough research in various libraries and historical archives on Liberty architecture and furniture of the period for Rome, whose ornamental decoration is released precisely based on the dialogues with nature, inward and outward, while the very classic and rectilinear composition of the furniture maintains that element of contemporary simplicity that allows us to integrate with the richness of the established ornamental elements.”