Product Spec Sheet

ElementBrandProduct Name
ManufacturersOIKOS VENEZIA
ManufacturersPorro S.p.A.
ManufacturersAntonio Lupi Design S.p.A.
ManufacturersB&B Italia
Kitchen supplierBoffi
Stone supplierCasone Group

Product Spec Sheet
Manufacturers
Manufacturers
Manufacturers
Manufacturers
Kitchen supplier
by Boffi
Stone supplier

Villa Orizzonte

UNICA Architects as Lead Architects

Located in the Italian Pianura Padana, at the urban edge of a small country town facing a river, Villa Orizzonte blends in with the surrounding landscape seeking maximum integration with the environment, also thanks to its southward orientation and privileged view toward the river.


The new one-story villa gently respects the old footprint of an old demolished two-story rural house. It is conceived as an extensive line in an open landscape overlooking the river, its presence is mostly perceived horizontally rather than volumetrically, its footprint integrates into the natural context as a gentle act in horizontality.

The roof was designed as the fifth façade of the building and it is equipped with a careful selection of solar panels and skylights in order to maximize the villa’s energetic performances. The roof is the unifying element of all the volumes, it is designed with a balance of voids and solids which define the indoor and outdoor spaces, blending with the vegetation, letting the light filter in and marking through its four voids the rhythm of the interior space. The first roof perforation designs like a Roman atrium the courtyard entrance to the house, the second void provides privacy to the bedrooms and hosts two suggestive Japanese acer trees. The third opening becomes a private patio for the master bedroom acting as an outdoor extension of the house; the fourth, almost as a cut in the roof, enlightens the corridor through a zenithal skylight. 


The building is ideally divided into two functional boxes; the first box is completely stone-cladded and it hosts the service areas, the garage and a small office. The second volume, lighter, contains the kitchen and the living room, the three en-suite bedrooms and a dining area surrounded by wide sliding glass doors that transform the house into a terrace open to the garden. The whole building is conceived as a perforated box in which openings become small private courtyards, like domestic landscapes episodes. Entering the house becomes a changing and pleasant promenade where volumes are visually connected and materials blend with vegetation.


The interior spaces are designed in order to provide the highest levels of comfort and privacy, flexibility and visual fluidity. The suggestive suspended marble-cladded fireplace strongly characterizes the living room and allows visual connection with the rooms and the patios. The outdoor porch connects the common areas of the house, the sheet of water of the pool is a mirror for the façade, the sky and the trees. Fluidity is enhanced by the minimalistic window frames embedded into the walls which open the house outwards blurring its limits with the landscape. 
Water is used as a building material cooling the environment and visually extending the built surfaces.
The project of Villa Orizzonte is narrated at all scales in a homogeneous architectural language, each and every element is shaped through the same philosophy. 


SUSTAINABILITY
The project was designed through sustainable building criteria by combining active and passive bio-climatic systems in order to secure comfortable internal climatic conditions and to minimize the energy consumption. The south porch enhances the cross ventilation lowering the internal temperature; the openings on the roof slab create Mediterranean patios which host vegetation and protect from the sunrays during summer. The proximity of the pool to the house helps the ventilation through convective air motions.
The villa follows the Energy Performance Building Directive of the EU also exploiting bio-climatic design equipment such as PV and solar panels, fulfilling the requirements to obtain the NZEB (Nearly zero-energy building) classification.

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