These
are two buildings, one realized in 1951 with 4 housings and the other in
1954 with 18 housings. There are part of a small residential quarter, located
West from the Olivetti factory in Ivrea. The first building is componed
of uneven floors, in order to let a garden space to the ground floor house
and a terrace to the first floor house. The living rooms are exposed towards
West , the bedrooms towards East, in order to define two fronts clearly
different. The West-sided front is characterized with a pensilina along
the ground part of the building, which corresponds to the staircase for
the terrace access from the ground level houses, and with white painted
stainless steel grates diagonally disponed.
The 18 housings' building, is an experiment in order to display together
three kinds of buildings as one, which is actually fascinating, specially
when each part has three different architectures on their main fronts. Continuing
this experiment to the backfronts, searching for unity instead of diversity
and solving contradictions then, il gioco è fatto. The theme of the
building as an architectural scene, the use of contradictory construction
elements, the research of complexity in the designing approach- that was
then theorized by R.Venturi- are all clearly expressed and anticipate what
can be relevant and present in more than a project further done by the studio.
G.M.O. |