"Villae Minimae"

“Villae Minimae” (Small Villas) is a collection of five isolated single-family villas that were developed and studied at a 1:200 scale. In all five cases, the projects were designed as ‘appendices,’ or as additions detached from larger properties but located in the immediate vicinity of those project sites. Thus, the villas never contain more than two bedrooms, and interior spaces are minimalisic. Beyond to pure functionality, we were explicitly requested to think of these projects as artifacts, or as machines for observing the landscape. The projects have in common a provocative and utopian approach. All projects are based on the distortion of a simple geometric figure; each distortion is a device designed to correspond to a panoramic view from the interior space, framing nature and allowing for contemplation of the landscape. This characteristic underlines the iconography of the projects: the dichotomy between nature and edifice. The villas, designed between January 2013 and April 2014, are presented here with a selection of drawings: two sketches, a diagram of the operational distortion, floor plans, elevations, sections, and renders. Given their conceptual nature, these projects occupy the border between case study and divertissement.