’30 Villa Renovation, Milan, Italy

Program: renovation of a semi-detached house
Size: 500 sqm
Status: completed in 2007

The semi-detached house with a rather small surface area (about 80 sq m) had already been given an addition and was thus curiously vertical.
A local law allowing one to live in an attic by raising the roof, made the house even more vertical, resulting in what is was truly a “one-family tower”.
Because of its height, the vertical connections of the building became very important and were given strong architectural weight.
The project consisted in freeing the plan of the house by creating a huge, full-height volume for the staircases, while simplifying the typical floor to just one bedroom and bathroom per floor.
The design of the street facades was simplified, while the garden façade was modified to be an all-glass façade.