“Sotto la nuvola” House

An archetype, in the broadest sense of the term, is the representation of a primary model that defines a formal, typological or spatial reference constantly reiterated throughout the history of architecture. For example, in the collective imagination, the idea of the home is often associated with the recognizable shape of a pitched roof, which has become the very archetype of primitive living. Marc-Antoine Laugier’s hut featured a sloping pitched roof supported by vertical timber and horizontal beams. Numerous projects today reinterpret this archetype in a contemporary style.

A house in Leiria, Portugal, designed by the Aires Mateus brothers, is a case in point. Purged of its central core, this archetype highlights the iconic form of the house in stylized form. Further examples include Piet Hein Eek’s houses, and Herzog & de Meuron’s design for the Vitra Campus, characterized by a series of seemingly randomly arranged, stacked and intersecting volumes.

In Italy, this kind of typological research, undertaken as part of a process of stylization and evolution of archetypal form, has been a staple for LDA.iMdA architects, based in San Miniato, in the Province of Pisa. Founded in 2003 by Gianni Bellucci and Paolo Posarelli, the practice has been exploring the archetypal house since its earliest works. One of the studio’s flagship projects, Sotto la Nuvola House [Under the Cloud], was conceived to leverage a close relationship with the morphological backdrop. Indeed, the project’s name refers to a large maritime pine tree – the eponymous “cloud” – that often recurs in isolated Italian rural farm landscapes.

Today, architects feel a pressing need to rediscover, enhance and reinterpret the kind of minor architecture that accounts for a significant part of Italy’s national heritage: after conducting a series of field explorations, in counterpoint to modern architecture, Giuseppe...

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