David Chipperfield Architects has completed a pair of vacation villas inspired by lemon houses on a hillside overlooking Italy’s largest lake .
The British architect’s Berlin office paired rugged stone walls with timber and concrete pergolas to recreate the aesthetic of Lake Garda’s famous limonaias – buildings where lemon trees are cultivated behind high walls.
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“The typology of the villas interprets the architecture of the limonaias, which have been created for the cultivation of lemons and are historically typical for the spot,” explained the crew. “These buildings characterised the western shore of Lake Garda with their pergola-like structures up till the end of the 19th century.”
“With reference to the limonaias, the constructing volumes are each and every framed by 3 sound exterior walls produced of organic stone masonry and developed up on a plinth of the identical materials,” the team added.
Chipperfield – who also lately completed an English countryside residence – was one particular of a number of architects invited to design a building for the Villa Eden resort, which is positioned on the western shore of the lake in a park filled with olive trees.
The resulting house comprises two villas that can be rented together or separately. 1 is even more down the hill than the other, but they are linked by an external staircase.
The largest of the two structures, identified as Villa David Chipperfield, is a two-storey structure with an open-plan living, dining and kitchen space on the ground floor. A spacious entrance hall leads to bedrooms on the upper degree, even though a separate wing contains another living space.
The second structure, named Ovest, is a small guesthouse with its very own residing and sleeping spaces.
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“The two buildings are carefully inserted into the landscape with its olive groves and cypress trees,” explained the studio. “Their volumes are divided into individual one or two storey structures, which are offset to one particular one more following the topography of the hillside.”
Pergolas front each houses, comprising concrete columns and beams, as nicely as timber louvres. In accordance to David Chipperfield Architects, they “echo the rhythm of the surrounding olive groves”.
“The pergolas give safety from the sun and extend the interior into a protected outside room, which leads to even more terraces with outside pools,” stated the studio.
Behind the pergolas, timber-framed floor-to-ceiling windows offer substantial views over the Mediterranean landscape.
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The stone utilized to create the walls and the terraces was sourced from local quarries.
Once complete, the Villa Eden will comprise 7 villas, a hotel and an apartment developing. Other architects involved incorporate New York-based mostly Richard Meier, who lately opened a private model museum, and Matteo Thun, who is based in Italy.
Photography is by David Chipperfield Architects.
Task credits:
Architect: David Chipperfield Architects
Design and style: Christoph Felger
Project management: Harald Müller
Task architects: Peter von Matuschka, Eberhard Veit, Thomas Benk, Franziska Rusch
Project staff: Maria Busch, Ulrike Eberhardt, Pavel Frank, Gesche Gerber, Frithjof Kahl, Mikhail Kornev, Lukas Schwind, Marc Warrington, Matthias Wünsche
Landscape architect: Enea Outdoors
Structural engineer: Ingenieurteam Bergmeister
Companies engineer: Energytech
Constructing physics: Felderer & Klammsteiner
Undertaking management: Ingenieurteam Bergmeister
Quantity surveyor: Ingenieurteam Bergmeister
Building documentation: Ingenieurteam Bergmeister
Web site plan 
Building plan 
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