“A cow’s muzzle” is how architects define them layout designed to convert a former building with historical elements into an apartment/studio for a young couple. Such a irony of fate, the house is in Lasagnana, dipped into mellow Val di Parma, from windows we can see chickens or grass as far as the eye can see. Country house has two floors and it’s made with clear stone, a structure that is the skin inside and outside the building. From regular distanced windows to thin columns until lower barrel vault, a big white void guarantee cohesion through the space, and it’s clear than any new rooms will interrupt it.
Native architect Francesco Di Gregorio and swedish Karin Matz choose integrate existing open space with a white box enterely covered with white tiles 10x10cm and equipped as a bathroom. Inside the box there are toilet facilities/cow’s eyes, outside there are sink and shower/cow’s nose. Other space are emphasized by open shelving systems and curtains on steel wires, along columns axis: night zone, living zone and in the middle home office zone. Kitchen is under construction in a dedicated room. As loft from industrial spaces, floor is made with grey concrete, slightly separated from other elements of construction. The minimal building renovation has radically changed space perception, rewriting the volumes equilibrium and making possible and new way of living in a rural context.
Photos by Francesco Di Gregorio (via)
