Reconfiguration of existing 1920s house to create a private residence.
Podere 43 is one of 45 identical farmhouses developed in the late 1920s in an effort to reclaim an area of marshland near Maremma. Marcello Piacentini, who was responsible for the original site plan, created a typology for each property which included three functionally independent central cores: a farmhouse, a barn and a tool shed.
Labics were commissioned by a young couple to convert one of these properties into their family country home. Rather than a holiday home, the clients wanted the house to become a meeting and gathering place for their friends and relatives. Labics' design aimed to treat each of the three existing structures differently. The farmhouse was originally conceived as a residence, and its historic character was retained. The barn and shed elements, however, were completely redefined by forcing their identity to become secondary to the overall structure of the property, helping the buildings to blend into the surrounding landscape. The relationship between house and landscape was of particular importance, due to the rural nature of the one hectare site and the desire of the clients that it be reinforced in the design. The distinction between confined and expansive spaces, between object and landscape, is blurred, the resulting form altering usual spatial relationships by exposing the interior space on the exterior, and ushering the wide, expansive quality of the outdoors inside.