This large oblong villa, in fact, has been part of the territory of Biella since 1965, constructed by the architect Boffa Ballaran, including a well-groomed park of 10,000 square meters, with flourishing vegetation of tall trees and a green carpet for tennis, alongside a volume built ten years later, in 1975, for the swimming pool and related facilities. Today it has become the dwelling of one of the children of the former owners, with a new family. And the place has changed. Glass has replaced the decoration and the solidity of the walls, as the solutions of full-height glazing generate perspectives from the inside, and the composition permeable to light and vision becomes a device that speaks of a total indoor-outdoor connection, while respecting the past of a work and a context.

Specifically, the project sets out to restore lightness and dematerialization to a complex layout, coherently absorbing the separate volume of the indoor pool while creating new vectors of fluid crossing and transition to the spaces developed in the main building with a single above-ground level, to which to add a small loft for a studio zone and a large basement level for services. “From a compositional standpoint I have conserve the entire pitched roof as a stylistic feature of the existing architecture, marked by traditional wooden beams and a mantle of tiles, while also conserving the two existing patios,” Delrosso explains. “It has been a way to balance the new intervention without altering the proportional balance of the place and its environmental value, as well as the constructive traditions based on essential forms. But several important expansions have been created, closing and reordering a series of existing porticos, and a new stereometrics form has been inserted with a metal structure that extends the space of the kitchen outside, with a glazing through which to face the garden.”

The layout is organized around the central patio, with glass doors, which becomes an inner courtyard opening into a large access corridor for the rooms, at the core of the layout. Then, as in the original design, the living area is placed in the southern and eastern parts, but it has been redefined with a sequence of open, communicating episodes. The bedroom zone to the east and north has been revised in a linear scheme, offering six bedrooms (master suite plus five units for children and guests, with associated bathrooms).  

“The closing of the large west portico has permitted us to introduce a wellness area with a sauna and a Turkish bath, in direct connection to the living area, but placed off center,” the designer continues. A careful selection of tailor-made elements and materials makes the overall architectural identity homogeneous, unified, without breaks, also in chromatic terms.