24/09/2024
An old house in the countryside to give new life to welcome 4 people and 2 dogs and a permanent guest.
A few years ago a young couple approached us at Ad'Architettura to commission us to restore an old country house that belonged to their grandparents.
The contact occurred during the Covid period, exactly during the period in which we watched the news to find out if we were in the red or yellow zone, practically when regardless of the colors of the zone, we had a curfew of 10 pm!
Meeting in person was risky, so we made do with technology, including video calls, emails, and WhatsApp messages.
During that time we learned to use platforms like Meet, Zoom and many others, but above all we had to learn to communicate our ideas differently, doing without body language, and therefore trying to convey enthusiasm and empathy using the means of technology.
I remember that we went to survey the building, agreeing on a day and time when we would find the front door open, but no one inside, with whom we could share impressions and impromptu ideas.
The project was conceived by meeting on video calls and formulating proposals with great enthusiasm on the part of us architects and with great expectation and joy on the part of our clients, who sometimes participated in the video calls with their children and four-legged friends.
Imagine what it would be like to send drawings in PDF format and comment on them by sharing a monitor, but without close human contact!
There were difficulties during that phase on both sides, but with great willingness and mutual commitment they were faced and overcome.
The next phase, that of the construction site, has now begun some time ago and has reached an advanced stage. With pride and a pinch of vanity on the part of us architects and the owners, we have noted that the result that is emerging continually arouses the interest and curiosity of the inhabitants of the area and the surrounding countryside, especially for an unusual presence inside the house.
If you are interested in knowing how this story/construction site will end.....follow us on this page.
Architects Gianni Ingardia and Giusi Mondino
02/10/2024
Some photos of the original building and the beginning of the construction site
This is how our clients' home looked in October 2021!
The photo above shows only half of the house, so let's imagine it as a train, long, that faced the main road with a row of doors and windows that led out onto a terrace. This outdoor space was once certainly the place where in the evening people would sit outside on chairs brought from inside, enjoying a bit of evening coolness in the company of friends or simply neighbors.
Behind the building, the land with the garden, the chicken coop and the spaces where the animals were kept. A space reserved compared to the street front, at that time not used to receive guests but as a work or storage space.
From the back of the house you can see the sloping roof and the square window at the top left, revealing the presence of the large haystack, which extended as far as the ground floor and was also used as a place for storing food.
Our construction site began at the end of October, under a grey sky and with the necessary precautions that we were required to take at the time.
The first operations to be done inside a construction site for a renovation are always demolitions!
We begin by removing old plaster, structurally unsafe floors and flooring.
In some ways the first phase of the renovation is a kind of cleaning of the house from everything that is old and no longer good, it is a kind of purification before making room for the spaces and essence of the future home!.
If from the outside the house looked like a low, squat train, from the inside, once the haystack floor was demolished, the house began to appear in its true proportions.
So, if you looked at the photo of the facade on the street and saw a ground floor house, you will soon realize that you were wrong.
On the left of the photo, you see Nicola, with whom we have already done some beautiful work and exciting renovations. This time I think I can say with certainty that the skills of
Nicola and his workers, will have to be employed in an uncommon and complex project.
At a certain point, once the floors have been removed, the building appears as a volume strongly elongated upwards.
In the meantime, we (Giusi and Salvo above) are starting to familiarize ourselves with the spaces of this construction site in view of the next phases of work.
10/19/2024
The demolitions continue.....
The volume attached to the house at the back was rotten and unfit for reuse. There were practically only the perimeter walls standing, a roof made only of arches and tiles (in our area this roof is called, with "ciaramire anniate"), not to mention the foundations, non-existent.
The project had already foreseen its demolition and replacement with a new volume of equivalent quantity, but built with a reinforced concrete and frame structure.
Inside the house, we begin to dig, a little to lower the level of the crawl space (an element of the house that guarantees ventilation and drainage below the floor level) and a little more to create a pool inside the house. A heated pool, a sort of small spa, in which to relax (once the construction is finished) after a long day of work.
We started digging during the winter and we had to stop almost immediately because we found water 30 cm under the floor!
Obviously we immediately started to pump the water with lifting pumps that allowed us to drain the water and convey it outside the construction site. Then we waited until everything was a little drier to continue with the excavation of the pool (as you can see in the photo here on the side).
Carrying out this operation with a mini excavator inside a room is always a delicate operation, as the operator must be extremely careful when moving because on one side he could hit the structure of the house with the vehicle itself and on the other, fall into the excavation.
Once the excavation is completed, the concrete bottom is poured, which will then be the base of the tank, and then the steel structure of the tank (walls and bottom) is reinforced.
From the photo you can see the drain cover that channels the pool water (like the shower drain, but much larger).
All this steel, which after a while will be drowned in concrete, will become a structure capable of resisting external forces.
To be clear, if the tub remains empty, it is the ground that exerts a push towards the inside of the tub, so the concrete wall must oppose this push. The water in the tub (which will be a lot) also exerts a pressure towards the wall, which will therefore also be stressed from the inside.
It is precisely for this reason that swimming pools should never be emptied, because the structures that contain the water act as a filter for the balance that is created between the thrust of the ground and that of the water.
At this point, after everything has been reinforced and the carpentry has been assembled, all that remains is to wait for the concrete to be poured and after a few days "disarm" everything. At that point the tank, at least the rough part, is ready!
The pool, however, is not that big to be considered a swimming pool (it is less than 5 metres long) and is not very practical for swimming, but it is also too deep to be considered a spa (it is around 190 cm).
Let's also consider that there will be children in this house and this could be a problem and bring risks.
So what do we do?!
At the owners' suggestion, we try to turn it into a tub with entry steps, where you can sit, perhaps in front of the hydromassage jets, in safety. While the older ones can do two strokes (two in number) in the deepest part. Let's put the idea into practice and have a sort of grandstand built that could even become a social space at certain times, perhaps inviting relatives or friends to share this space in the house.
Meanwhile, on the construction site, there are already those who observe and take measurements, imagining and anticipating certain moments of relaxation, but there are also those (on the left) who know that the work is only just beginning and there is still much more to do to complete this construction site.
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