An all-out project encompassing Architecture, Design and Art comes to the Po Vally. A home that breaks the mould, using state-of-the-art, high performance materials for a new concept of living space

“If the architecture of the future will be active, buildings that produce more energy than we consume, using only renewable sources, which has become a question of necessity nowadays, we would like them to be considered, from a formal and perception point of view, as art and as being an aesthetic dimension of the soul. As if they were pieces in an open-air museum, the landscape.” This is the philosophy of Alessandro Lazzari (born in 1972), Marco Mazzetto (born in 1973) and Massimiliano Martignon (born in 1972), the owners of 3ndy Studio in Vigonovo, in the province of Venice. The creators of this new residential project in Ponzano Veneto (Treviso) built in a residual lot alongside a residential building which was rather featureless and traditional.


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Marco Mazzetto and Alessandro Lazzari, both of them graduated at the University Institute of Architecture in Venice (IUAV) in 1999, in 2002 establish the “3ndyStudio” in the province of Venice. Since the start, the activity of the studio has been interested in planning research and in realization of architectures which required different levels of interventions: from the objects up to the buildings and the urban projects. The Studio has also participated to several national and international design contests, obtaining different mentions and awards. The 3ndy Studio project was created in 2007 with the collaboration of Massimiliano Martignon, an architect graduated at the University Institute of Architecture in Venice. This collaboration is expressed especially at an executive and directorial development of the activities, representing the trait d’union between the creative design of the architects Mazzetto and Lazzari and the realization in the building site, together with the research of the more innovative and technological solutions.

“As architects we are aware of our ethical responsibility. A place has its roots to preserve but there must also be innovation open to different forms of interpretation. In this project there are still some founding elements and the role of nature is key, for example the patio and the lemon tree around which the single-storey home has been developed. High tech and high performance materials such as white Solid Surface and Lapitec in Absolute Black, molded together to obtain a certain aesthetic effect. Both materials are key for “removing” all technological additions from the home, those which would have been visual inconveniences, such as the external drainpipes or the internal electric plates, the latter being customized and integrated into the walls and activated by interactive touch screen commands.”

Since the studio started out in 2002, it has developed projects in which forms generate geometric and perceptive strains, that expand and contract space, leading to unexpected spaces which in some ways recall Malevich’s works. In this case the concept box was modeled with parametric design tools, in two irregular prisms, which, rotating, collide in a “hybrid“ and fluid space. This generates a contemporaneous vision of the internal and external spaces, a seamless transition through the living and night areas, eliminating the often trivial marginality of corridors.

If the architecture of the future will be active, buildings that produce more energy than we consume, using only renewable sources, which has become a question of necessity nowadays, we would like them to be considered, from a formal and perception point of view, as art and as being an aesthetic dimension of the soul."

And not only. A series of diamond shaped breaches in the external monolithic surfaces in white Solid Surface, intended as an additional dynamic, perceptual system, outline special views, enhancing the quality of light which floods in through the large glass windows (facing onto the patio) as well as from the large ceiling skylights. And at same time enhancing the privacy of the spaces. “The whole house and indoor swimming pool can be seen from the bedroom, without being bijective. A concept which has even more weight when considering the external spaces, where certain areas need to be safeguarded” explain the designers.

The colour scheme and choice of materials complete the picture, injecting rhythm and surprising aesthetics into the rooms. If, outside, the form of the architecture recalls the cuts of precious stones, complemented by the courtyard-patio, the garden and the lemon tree, inside, the swimming pool, covered in Lapitec, a full bodied sintered stone slab available in large format slabs, is the main feature offering interplay with light and shade, enlivening alternately the perception of the surfaces during the daytime.

As architects we are aware of our ethical responsibility. A place has its roots to preserve but there must also be innovation open to different forms of interpretation. In this project there are still some founding elements and the role of nature is key."

Here, in its sleek and elegant “Absolute Black” variety in Vesuvio finish, this natural material (applied in the bathrooms because of its water resistance quality, consequently reducing slipperiness and dirt build up) is used on the back wall of the swimming pool where it lends a coup de theatre with a rather mysterious slab engraved with the work of the Piacenza- born artist and sculptor Giorgio Milani. A stunning 3 meter high stem “hollowed out mechanically using a diamond tip drill with water ejector, the result of a long and painstaking process” say the architects “which interprets an inscription, in a form of visual poetry, by the grandfather to his grandchildren. In memory of unforgettable moments in their family history.

Project 3ndy Studio - Photos courtesy Fernando Guerra