The House on the Lake

Written by Omar Dahabra

Location: Porto Valtravaglia, Italy
Year: 2024
Architects: duearchitetti
Photography by: Simone Bossi

Each house is a story where it’s beautiful to enter, to observe, to listen, to assimilate. It is here where the architect, with his direction, can intervene to create a new scene! The lake house is a ’70s cottage that has always been used as a holiday home.

After this past, there was the desire on the part of one of the heirs to make it a home to be lived in all year round. His home! The need to renovate it and revive it to accommodate a new, lively and dynamic personality, pandering to his passions and requirements, was a strong stimulus for the project! The shared objective has been to make it a home to live in all year round, enjoying private life or with friends.

The villa, due to its location, works on two opposite and complementary fronts. The water of the lake, on the north-west side, with its blue-green … sometimes grey colour, is so near that you feel you could almost touch it. A steep slope, on the opposite side, on the south-east, creates a totally green front. Here there is a staircase that is used to descend to the house from the road which remains high above and therefore soon forgotten.

Water and greenery thus became the constant ‘binomial’ of the project, strongly perceived from the first inspection. From the inside they sometimes alternate (each other), sometimes overlap.

At the planimetric level, all the non structural elements of the villa have been eliminated to create a layout organized through connections and no longer divisions, a free, comfortable space with rooms that flow together with each other and the outside. All it took was a strong  and decisive gesture of design to give the house a completely different dynamic and rhythm of life. By closing the entrance porch with two full-height glass walls, a new environment has been created, a transparent box within the greenery facing south east. Here we placed the kitchen, an active and central place for the new owner, a carefully equipped and convivial space that works in close connection with the neighbouring exterior where the historical pergola of  the house is located, which we have deliberately left untouched.

Perfectly integrated with the surrounding green space, in summer it is completely covered with dense wisteria and it becomes a pleasant place to stay … in the shade … enjoying the light breeze coming from the north can be enjoyed. A space that welcomed us throughout the entire construction period!

The house is surrounded by other outdoor spaces that, with different characteristics, are experienced as extensions of the interior spaces.

Among these, a small porch, located between the master bedroom and the living room, becomes a more intimate space positioned in front of the lake where, in the morning, one takes time to wake up  slowly and, in the evening, enjoy a relaxing aperitif or an after dinner drink in the company of the blazing fireplaces. A terrace positioned below, at dock level, becomes the place for sunbathing.

Just a little higher than the beach, it makes us feel like we are on holiday and reminds us of the awareness of being in the ‘lake house’. Text description by the architects.


Source: www.duearchitetti.it
Area: 100 sqm

Omar Dahabra
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