T+T Residence

The T+T duplex residence in Cattolica, on the Romagna Riviera, reinterprets the local archetypal gabled home in an abstract and contemporary manner. Piraccini+Potente Architettura designed the house for two sisters seeking a contemporary domestic solution for their respective families. The structure is a new volume that replaces a pre-existing building on-site. A far cry from the conventional image of a two-family dwelling, it avoids a typical mirrored, twin-half division in favor of a single and unified architectural body.

The architects explain that, balancing function, comfort, and architectural language, the residence’s form is a dialogue between the sun and a measured idea of domestic space. Elementary volumes combine as if they were a small village devoid of compositional hierarchy. The design is situated in a suburban fabric consolidated during the 1960s and 1970s (as in many Italian cities), composed of single-family houses and small residential buildings erected without any coherent plan, all sharing the motif of a pitched-roof. This backdrop inspired the metaphysical idea of a small hamlet rising over a transparent base. The building rests on a glazed ground floor supporting four seemingly suspended prismatic timber volumes clad in standing-seam metal panels. By night, the base dematerializes into a diaphanous membrane, leaving the archetypal, stereometric volumes above to seemingly hover mid-air.

Two stairwells at the center of the square plan connect the building’s four levels: a basement with garages, ground floor living areas, and first and second floors reserved for sleeping quarters. The design conceals its symmetrical order by unfolding along a broken axis defined by a boundary wall that, diagonally cutting through the building, separates the two dwellings. Broad, glazed, ground-level façades are screened by vertical, wooden-slat, sliding panels in an arrangement that preserves inhabitants’ privacy while...

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