News
19 December 2024
Villa Terren, the house designed around someone living with a rare disease, received the Premio Templum — ArchitettItaliani 2024, presented on 19 December in the Sala della Protomoteca at the Campidoglio in Rome. For the studio it is the second year running.
The award, promoted by the Associazione Liber with the publisher RDE, selects one project for each Italian region. For the Veneto this villa in Mestre was chosen, recognised as a design “of great architectural value and high social profile”.
A single storey, about five hundred square metres, very low consumption. The south façade works as an accumulator: 44% is glazed, the rest is made of elements containing paraffin cassettes. In the sun the paraffin melts slowly, between 27 and 35 degrees, and by inertia gives the heat back to the house for many hours.
The glazing has three panes, with a selective outer pane and an argon-filled cavity; inside, a sheet of prismatic plexiglass turns away direct light when the sun is higher than 40 degrees. In summer the light comes in filtered, in winter the low sun reaches the far end of the rooms.
The services run between roof and false ceiling and beneath the floor, so the envelope is never pierced; the foundations are ventilated and lined with cellular glass, which insulates against radon. Heat-recovery ventilation, a buried ground exchanger and a 20 kW photovoltaic system cover the year’s needs: little energy is drawn from the grid, and only in winter.
In the room with the small physiotherapy pool one wall is built of pink Himalayan salt bricks; the living areas have chromotherapy colours laid with adamantine glue, glossy like worked ivory; the roof gardens and the flowerbeds are treated with terra preta, the black soil rich in organic matter.
Design and site supervision arch. Martina Peloso
