“Effebi house” designed by Architettura Matassoni is the result of the refurbishment of a seventies flat located near Arezzo in Tuscany (Italy), made for a four people young family.

The client’s brief program included a whole living area composed by the entrance, the livingroom, the diningroom, the kitchen with a small storage. Going on, through a wardrobe-distribution space, we find the night-area comprehensive of three bedrooms and twoo bathrooms. Because of the common property of the perimeter walls, they couldn’t be modified and we have had to image this space as inside an untouchable box.
Despite the delicate existing structural masonry (protected by very strict rules to ensure the building against the earthquakes), we designed one whole and organic environment for the living-area, obtainable realising a wide opening in the main internal wall. To make the most of the surface, using the smallest amount of money possible, we also decided to use plasterboard panels for the mostly: this is a cheap material but very adapt to make the complex shapes we wanted. Indeed the purpose of the project was to create a very fluid space by using enveloping surfaces.
The resulting space had to be very dynamic and, as much as possible abstract, to avoid the feeling to be inside a simple house inside a traditional box made by orthogonal surfaces. We wanted to create a surreal space. To achieve the goal we let rise the wood floorings on to the walls and the ceilings go down, creating the narrow cuts in which are settled the strips led for the lighting.
Using these sculpted shapes, we wanted to call to memory the feeling of a natural space, focusing on those fundamental human needs concerning the “ ancestral shelter”.
Photography courtesy of Architettura Matassoni