8/4/2019 Sep11 Archi T2 House
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PERSPECTIVE
CHITECTURE T2 House / Ferrara, Italy
103PERSPECTIVE
Teach aman to fish
learning to build his own home, Antonio Ravalliveloped an
awareness of sensitive architecture
ilippo Guidis T2 house in Ferrara,
Italy, tells a story about expanding
architecture for the good of society. Not
only did Guidi accomplish a rectangular
space-conscious two-bedroom residence,
he learned to build the house for himself with
the help of his friend Antonio Ravalli, founder of
Antonio Ravalli Architetti.
Ravalli, through his architecture, interiors,
and urban design firm, helped Guidi with his
cabin design. The incarnation of sustainability is
a hybrid of Modernist inspiration and rustic
masculinity. Material selection required a
thoughtful process based on multiple
challenges. Site orientation demanded carefully
planning. Ventilation was a labour of classic
architecture practices. In the end, however,
Ravalli not only helped his friend achieve a
gorgeous abode, he metaphorically taught a
man to fish.
Locally available materials such as laminated
timber beams and copper shingles add aesthetic
value to the rural residence and help Guidi to
achieve energy and economic efficiency. The
intrinsically irregular qualities of the shingles
make a shocking impression upon first glance in
this rural area, yet upon second glance they
actually help the house to blend in with its
neighbors because of their very rustication.
It was also very important that the materials
nichole l reber
ography : courtesy of ravalli architetti
Fwere easy to assemble, because the house was to
be built by the client himself, who didnt possess
previous experience about construction, says
Ravalli. Not only was his friend the client, Guidi
also wore the hats of bricklayer and builder,
exemplary of the growing trend toward placing
more social value in architecture, permeating its
value beyond the bourgeois.
In times in which houses are becoming
more and more sophisticated, and in which
theres the need to call somebody to solve even
the smallest technical problem, the almost total
knowledge of Filippo about his own home,
having built it, is something which recalls
ancient ways and times, says Ravalli.
The T2 house might just exemplify what
Jos Gmez and Susan Rogers wrote in their
essay An Architecture of Change, found in the
book Expanding Architecture. In this, they say
design does not have to be compromised in the
process of serving the needs of others.
The house introduced a giving and
receiving relationship between thinking and
doing the project, since it was not only the
designing approach that affected the way of
materially building it, but, in reverse, it was also
the way of gradually realising it that influenced
the subsequent steps in the design process,
says Ravalli.
What we are trying to do is to produce a
sensitive architecture, in which this involves
the five senses. The direction of the light at the
sunset and its vibration through the leaves, the
different colours of the seasons, the sensation
of the heat produced by the fireplace, are all
fundamental elements. This approach comes
from our personal aptitude, but we think the
present day culture is paying more and more
attention about this kind of thing, and to a li vely
relationship with the environment.
Guidi used the excess lumber remaining
from the homes shell to construct his own
furniture the bed, for one, was made with
same wood found in the beams. Cross
ventilation is naturally built in to the home and
undergirded by its orientation on the lot. Many
design aspects were determined by the
presence of the trees on the site and their
position. The dialogue of the building with the
landscape, the relation between the inner space
and the exterior, are a consequence of all these
choices guided by sustainability concepts.
One of the most evident effects is that
each window faces a different tree of the
garden, with a different colour and a different
blossom period. The house is positioned
between the trees so that they can proportion
shadow in summer and create a greenhouse
effect in winter, Ravalli says.
Ceiling heights escalate from 2.5 to 4.2
metres, which Ravalli designed for the dual
purposes of storage and ventilation the
bedroom and studio doors can remain open at
the higher part, thereby permitting air to
circulate freely throughout the whole house.
