A couple buy a single-family house of two levels with gardens in a residential neighbourhood of Ragusa (Sicily).
The house chosen for its good position doesn’t satisfy their wishes : wide spaces for the day-life, a part for the hosts and a garden in contact with the house.
The clients don’t want to demolish the house so they accept an intervention that re-organize indoor and outdoor spaces, involving also the facades.
The first decision is to bring back the building to its essential volume. It was carried out a process of reduction through a progressive demolition of the pre-existing form.
From the simulation of the process on the model came the idea: every cut out (projection, pitched roof), casually collected on one side, were moved under the principal front.
The objective to bring the garden into the house : with the accumulation of ruins has been gained the continuity of the quotes between first floor and the exterior. On the ruins has been grafted the new garden.
The insertion of the functional program determines position and dimension of the new opening, the definition of the quoted garden floor, the structural intervention…
Some functional elements that don’t add cubic meters but instead redefine the volume filling the empty spaces were introduced, re-estabilishing connexions extending interior surface toward the garden.
What is interesting of this architect is her capability to work with the existing, society, reality, technologies.

[project selected by Giacoma Di Vieste]