Nepita by DAA Studio
Nepita sits among pines and olive trees in Palazzolo Acreide, Italy, where DAA Studio reworks a 1990s country house into a precise play of volumes and color. The house becomes a collected retreat, its three blocks clarified through bold facades, tactile finishes, and a renewed relationship between living, sleeping, and cooking. Inside and out, the project turns memory into a clear, contemporary domestic landscape.
Pitched roofs cut against the Hyblaean sky while teal, ochre, and ivory planes step forward between pines and olive trees. Light glances off lava stone thresholds and deep blue pool water before slipping indoors.
This is a country house, reorganized and recolored in Palazzolo Acreide by DAA Studio, where a 1990s structure gains new life through a precise interior palette. The project holds onto original forms, then sharpens their roles through color, masonry, and tile. Every move turns attention to how material and tone guide daily use.
Three volumes set the rhythm: kitchen, living core, and sleeping quarters, each now legible at a glance through distinct exterior finishes. Cocciopesto plaster in a teal green marks the kitchen block, an ochre raw coat wraps the bedrooms, and an ivory white shell holds the central living rooms. Lava stone frames thresholds, windowsills, and steps, drawing dark lines against the lighter walls and pulling the graphic contrast into the pool, where the lining gives the water an intense, almost inked blue.
Color Blocks Define Life
The three volumes no longer just organize rooms; they cue how the house is used. In teal, the former garage becomes the kitchen, animated by its new role as the social hinge. The sleeping rooms sit within their ochre band, slightly withdrawn yet visually tied to the rest of the house through the shared lava stone details. Ivory holds the living core, a calm counterpoint where the full chromatic composition comes into view at once.
A Fireplace as Vertical Anchor
At the heart of the living area, a monolithic masonry and concrete fireplace rises from floor to ceiling. Clad in small square burgundy tiles, it becomes a vertical anchor that catches light throughout the day. The deep color grounds the room and plays against the paler walls and dark stone elements. Furniture and circulation arrange themselves around this tiled core, giving the living room a clear center of gravity.
Rooms Along a Light Axis
On the ground floor, two bedrooms frame an ideal axis that runs from the entrance door to a glass opening at the opposite side. This linear view creates a telescope of light that visually separates living from dining while keeping the rooms in quiet conversation. Above, a third bedroom takes over the entire first floor, with a large private terrace extending its reach into the hillside air. All three bedrooms gain their own bathrooms, turning the rural house into a place for extended stays.
Stair, Steps, and Reclaimed Garage
The original internal spiral staircase remains as a distinctive sculptural element. DAA Studio keeps its form, then ties it into the renewed interior with micro-cement steps at its base. In the former garage, now the kitchen, a demolished wall opens new sightlines and movement back to the main house. A trio of micro-cement steps resolves the change in level between old and new, their quiet gray tying together stair, kitchen, and circulation.
Around it all, the garden of pines and olives holds the house in steady shade and dappled light. Colored facades, dark stone, and reflective water answer that landscape without competing. The renovation turns a remembered family retreat into a clear, contemporary house, where material, hue, and light keep the past and present in close contact.
Photography by Nepita
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