BRH+ designs the renovation and interior of an historical apartment in the heart of the centre of Turin. The space is intended as a laboratory of new grammars of relationship between ancient and contemporary expressive languages. The architectural project, characterized by calibrated functionality and by sartorial design down to the smallest detail, responds to the owners’ need to house their collection of contemporary art.
The flat is located in a building of particular historical interest, listed as one of the city’s architectures of value by the Superintendence. The premises were built in 1841 and are characterised by an orderly and dryly linear composition of the façades, in the Borgo Nuovo district – an area destined for the nobility and built to the south-east of the ancient city by will of King Victor Emmanuel I of Savoy.
The project is confronted with the complexities of a highly constrained context, and aims to protect its 19th-century identity features, adapting to today’s performance standards with innovative and unobtrusive plant engineering solutions.
The entrance, in which the octanium colour of the walls enhances by contrast the brilliant abstract polychrome fresco by the artist Victoria Stoian, leads to the daytime rooms of the large living and dining areas, both covered by large vaults painted with decorations that have undergone careful restoration.
The internal distribution path that leads to the bedrooms and service rooms is characterised by a sequence of entirely custom-designed built-in furnishings, characterised by a composition of wood and natural stone surfaces, always illuminated by a constellation of light sources studied in detail.
In the dining area and bathrooms, all the versatility of marble’s expressive potential unfolds, with surprising colours and refined cuts. In the bedrooms, different spatial solutions are experimented and defined, through the design of an articulated system of custom-made furnishings.
