In a small historic village near Florence, Officina Abitare has renovated a small townhouse, radically transforming it in the interior and making it an energy-efficient building.
Project Name: U160
Studio Name: officina abitare
The ground floor, which houses the living area, has been organized into two large open spaces: one overlooking the street where the living room is located, and one overlooking the private garden where the kitchen opens onto the dining room.
The kitchen space, previously divided into several rooms, has been freed up. Two large French doors have been opened towards the garden, which have made the environment rich in natural light, creating a new large space designed to be lived in daily by the whole family, not just for the consumption of food. The C-shape with peninsula of the new kitchen creates relationships both with the dining table and with the French door leading into the garden.
Anthracite gray, black and white: a simple and functional kitchen, which creates a contrast with the other part of the room that houses the dining table, characterized by warm and welcoming colors.
The kitchen, dining room and living room are separated from the central and less bright area of the house, in which a service block has been created consisting of a box for a new bathroom on the ground floor, which did not have one before.
The new bathroom has been placed inside a dove-gray box, lowered than the vaulted ceiling that characterizes the living room. This allows you to maintain the legibility of the original environment, and to perceive the space in its entirety.
In front of the bathroom is the new staircase that connects the living area on the ground floor to the sleeping area on the first floor. A folded steel sheet staircase crosses the space above the bathroom box as in an Escher drawing, denouncing its presence without however indicating its point of ascent.
On the first floor, the spaces have been reorganized to obtain a new large bathroom serving two double bedrooms. A disengagement of landing of the staircase serves all these environments, also guaranteeing the space for a bookcase and a service cupboard designed to optimize all the available space.
Another focus of the project was to structurally and energetically redevelop the house, which was in disastrous conditions, with widespread humidity and structural problems. The project included widespread structural consolidation works as well as the complete refurbishment of the roof, foundations, fixtures, and the complete replacement of the existing system with a modern heat pump for air conditioning and DHW.
Thanks to the planned and implemented interventions, the house has undergone a radical transformation at a spatial level, in the relations with the external spaces of the garden and the surrounding landscape, in the contribution of natural light in all environments, and also in energy performance: the insulation and the new heat pump system have made it possible to reach Energy Class B, a very high performance for an old building, which on average has an energy class G.
