Surf House in Levanto

Anna Positano

• Architects

Applied products

IC Lights Table Flos

Tech specification IC Lights Table 0.19 MB

Tech spec IC Lights Table 3.pdf 0.1 MB

View all applied products

In Levanto, a coastal town in Liguria on Italy’s northwest Riviera near the Cinque Terre, llabb has completed the renovation of a 100‑sqm apartment in a 1930s villa overlooking the beach. Surf House in Levanto is an interior rethought through bespoke millwork, in continuous dialogue with the seafront and the everyday life of the place.

Levanto, a port town with a distinct local identity and a direct relationship to its maritime landscape, is the setting for the new residence by llabb. A U.S. family purchased a raised‑ground‑floor unit in an early twentieth‑century villa locally known as “the Blondet house” and commissioned its conversion into a permanent home. The building, part of the urban frontage that faces the beach and the sea, retains original high‑quality elements — including the polychrome marble entrance ramp — and a mixed structural system with load‑bearing partitions that constrains the reconfiguration of the interior.

photo_credit Anna Positano — Anna Positano

Founded as a carpentry workshop, llabb has developed a design approach that, while rooted in artisanal skill, confidently extends from interior design to architectural interventions on a broader scale. In this project, which responds to a distinctive environmental condition and to clients who are open to a collaborative process, llabb demonstrates the ability to combine constructional expertise with a playful attitude, translating these qualities into coherent spatial solutions and compositional choices.

The clients requested three bedrooms, two bathrooms, a study, a generous kitchen and a living room — requirements condensed into just over one hundred square meters. The presence of load‑bearing partitions and the original room layout informed a design aimed at optimizing the internal distribution while preserving the building’s historic character.

Llabb’s intervention reconfigures the plan while recovering the original spatial logic. Two bedrooms and a small study/ guest room are located to the north; the technical services — two bathrooms and a service room — occupy the central band; to the south, the living area opens toward the beach and becomes the home’s primary social space.

The service corridor that originally connected the north rooms along a segmented route with a right‑angle turn has been shortened to emphasize the apartment’s principal axis: the seaside entry sequence has been transformed into a unifying spatial device that links the two seafront rooms, enlarges the living area and improves its usability. Organizing the entire apartment is a continuous band of custom millwork in oak and deep blue, executed in two phases, which functions as both circulation and integrated storage system: kitchen, bench, bookcase, storage, niches, beds, desks and wardrobes are all part of a single system that orders the space and defines its character.

Wood, the foundational material of llabb’s practice, performs both a structuring and an identifying role: in primary areas it defines essential volumes; in the children’s rooms it becomes curves and recesses that reference nautical design and surf culture. The intervention privileges visual and perceptual continuity through alignments and openings that amplify the sense of spatial breadth while respecting the original structure.

Surf House is the outcome of a project that integrates artisanal skill, careful spatial organization and a sustained dialogue with the maritime landscape, delivering a functional residence distinguished by a strong material identity. The project confirms llabb’s ability to translate carpentry into a spatial device capable of organizing complex functions within compact footprints.