filippo bombace

Buying a newly renovated house, but realising later, while living in it, that it does not reflect you.

This is what happened to the young couple who own a particular property on three levels in Rome's Esquilino district, originally the site (late 19th century) of an art academy, as can be seen above all by the generous size of the main living room, characterised by its considerable floor plan (about 8 x 8 metres), but above all by its striking height - still almost 8 metres - and the large window opening onto the garden in front of it.

It was thus decided at the time to intervene in the most significant parts, to refine above all the character of the house.

Before the recent renovation work, the house had the classic features of late 19th-century social housing, which can be summed up, for example, in the grit-marble floors in various colours, preserved in some parts of the house, but changed with the latest round of work into a late 19th-century bourgeois image, with black lacquered woodwork and brass lamps.

But it is above all in the condominium parts that the building communicates the flavours desired by the client today: the plasters, the stone stairs, the handrails, the other wooden parts, in fact, shamelessly tell all their wrinkles, and it is precisely this that could become the starting point for the definition of the new palette of materials, certainly to be “shifted” towards warm and rough flavours.

In fact, the photographic input transmitted by the client confirms the desired character: the absence of pure colour and a predilection instead for material, almost always interpreted through the use of wood, stone and sandy plaster, always around natural, warm earth tones.

A nice two-handed work with the client then starts at this point, producing the overhaul of the living area of the house with some fundamental touches.

In order, starting with the entrance:

• the black boiserie that used to completely cover the room is removed and the original brick wall structure is brought back to light on one wall, while some maple wood furnishing modules, suspended on the wall, anticipate the design layout of the bookcase in the living room;

• in the salon is certainly the star of the setting, in reality almost more of an art installation, which alternating two- and three-dimensional modules draws a precise pattern carefully balanced together with the clients;

• in the kitchen, the partial change to the finish of the furniture, a new flooring with a concrete flavour, but above all the adoption of Guatemala green marble for the worktops and island verticals, design the new palette of the room;

• in the staircase, on the other hand, the present metal railing is replaced by a system of slats still made of wood, which also partly veil the adjacent laundry area.

• some minor alterations to the furnishings and fittings present help to give coherence to the specific part of the house, together of course with the new lighting fixtures, partly recessed and partly external, on the wall or ceiling.

The sum of these interventions thus portrays the desired pathos, which can today be enjoyed above all from the modular island sofa that completes the living room, which allows one to admire the balanced marble composition of the kitchen on the one hand and the installation designed for the large wall on the other, deliberately and consciously “exaggerated”, yet capable of designing bookcase zones, closed containers or simply graphic signs, to be looked at and understood in moments of relaxation.