Co.arch Studio refreshes apartment in Mario Galvagni-designed Italian Alpine complex
Milanese office Co.arch Studio has emphasised angular geometries in this revamp of an apartment in one of the best-known buildings by neo-modernist architect Mario Galvagni.
Co.arch Studio founders Andrea Pezzoli and Giulia Urciuoli oversaw the renovation of the apartment, which is located on the fourth and fifth floors of Giomein, an apartment complex completed by Galvagni in 1972 in Breuil-Cervinia, northern Italy, one of the highest ski resorts in the Alps.
When the owners bought the apartment, it was lavishly furnished with jacquard fabric wall coverings, timber panelling, mirrored surfaces and wall-to-wall carpets in every room, including bathrooms.
The renovation allows the angular surfaces of the experimental building to become more focal than they were previously.
Pezzoli and Urciuoli explored the possibility of preserving some of the previous fittings, but discovered that most were worn beyond repair. This led them to instead pursue a "return to the bare bones".
"In this return to the bare bones, the interior's expressive elements emerged more sharply," the architects explained.
"The roof, clad externally in copper and internally in larch boards, echoes the logic of mountain ridgelines through variable heights and acute volumes; and the projecting bow windows are understood as optical devices that regulate the relationship between inhabitant and landscape."
The architects took a similarly elemental approach to the interior design, using different materials and colours to give various objects and furnishings a sense of visual weight.
A key reference was Carlo Scarpa's Casa Tabarelli, located near the ski slopes of Bolzano, which creates tensions through the relationships between angular geometries, colours and material surfaces.
Floor surfaces were adjusted in the living room to create an oak-framed conversation pit that takes cues from Mario Bellini's 1970s Camaleonda sofa, facing a Verde Alpi marble fireplace that extends floor-to-ceiling.
More green marble is dotted through the rest of the apartment, including a step at the room's entrance and splashbacks and shower walls in the bathrooms.
Behind the conversation pit, a custom-made blue dining table and matching wood-veneered bench follow the lines of the asymmetric windows, while a new rotated-square window looks through to a kitchen featuring pale green cabinets and a stainless steel counter.
The architects describe this detail as "a controlled homage to the luminous geometries of Galvagni's common areas".
There are three bedrooms, including a main bedroom with a restored Bellini-designed Le Mura bed in brown corduroy velvet and a children's room featuring a custom-made bunk with playful cutaways.
On the loft level, a bed platform was built into a window bay that features newly installed timber shutters.
Pale limestone floors were installed in the bathrooms and kitchen, while other rooms were fitted with Besana carpets in a mix of shades.
The Milanese owners have completed the interior with artworks by Pablo Bronstein, Iva Lulashi, Joanna Piotrowska and Jeremy Shaw.
"The interior design moves within a precise balance, preserving the spatial memory of the 1970s without literally replicating its decorative codes," said Pezzoli and Urciuoli.
The duo hope the project will bring new attention to the architecture of Galvagni, who was long overlooked by critics.
His work was rarely published in Italian architectural magazines such as Casabella or Domus, perhaps because his approach was more contextual than that of contemporaries working in the Alpine region, such as Marcel Breuer or Charlotte Perriand.
"The Giomein apartment works through subtraction and precision; it clears away what time has made fragile, recomposes spatial coherence and restores a contemporary domesticity to Galvagni's architecture," said Pezzoli and Urciuoli.
"The result is an interior in which the landscape is not only a view but a structural condition; entering the slopes of the ceiling, the direction of light cuts and the posture of the furnishings, becoming part of the everyday life of its inhabitants and their collection."
Other recent Italian renovations featured on Dezeen include a conversion of a Tuscan chapel into "house for art" by Atelier Vago and the transformation of a Rome "villino" with glass floors and mirrored ceilings.
The photography is by Francesca Iovene.
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