Renovation and extension of a single-family home, sea view.
House in Roiano transforms a modest semi-rural dwelling into a contemporary residence while preserving the essence of its original identity. Built using traditional construction techniques typical of the Trieste area, the existing house features stone masonry walls, timber floors and a pitched roof finished with clay tiles. Originally, the building consisted of two independent levels with no internal connection. During the 1970s, a reinforced concrete terrace was added, disrupting the compositional balance of the main facade.
Rather than pursuing a return to an imagined original state, the project embraces the building as the result of successive historical layers. Even the later additions are not removed but reinterpreted: the terrace is redesigned and carefully integrated into the rhythm of the existing openings, becoming part of a renewed architectural composition.
The site's complex topography becomes the project's central theme. The property unfolds across three distinct levels: the street and parking area, the entrance level of the house, and the large garden rising behind it. The intervention transforms this fragmented condition into a continuous sequence of spaces, paths and relationships, reconnecting architecture and landscape without altering the domestic character of the existing building.
The house has been entirely reorganized. A new staircase finally connects the two previously independent floors, and opens onto the rear garden through a large glazed wall that extends the domestic space beyond the building envelope. The continuity between inside and outside is further reinforced by the Venetian terrazzo floor of the living room, which continues seamlessly into the covered porch, creating a unified spatial experience.
Landscape design is conceived as an integral part of the architectural intervention. All external surfaces are redesigned using solid brick paving laid in a herringbone pattern, establishing a measured dialogue with the existing stone walls and the surrounding vegetation. The landscape becomes an architectural element, accompanying movement across the site's changing levels.
The spatial organization clearly belongs to the Modernist tradition, founded on clarity of circulation, spatial continuity and the close relationship between architecture and landscape. Yet the project deliberately avoids stylistic abstraction. The new staircase, doors and bespoke timber furnishings adopt a restrained twentieth-century character, incorporating an antique fireplace and a traditional Trentino ceramic stove. These elements preserve the material memory of the house while becoming essential components of the new architectural composition.
Rather than opposing old and new, the project establishes a dialogue between the different historical layers of the building. Modernity is understood not as a formal language, but as a design attitude capable of bringing order to complexity, recognizing the value of what already exists and transforming it into an active part of the architectural project.
In this sense, House in Roiano affirms a simple principle: modern architecture is not an image but an attitude. It is the capacity to interpret place, history and the existing fabric through a measured design approach that creates a new sense of unity without erasing the traces of time.
