House of bright stalactites is anything but a minimalist interior

In the project by Gambardellarchitetti, a masterly and feisty use of geometry, light and color challenges the aesthetics of a little bourgeois flat, turning it into a “photonic storm”.

Gambardellarchitetti (Simona Ottieri Gambardella), House of bright stalactites, Naples, Italy, 2021

Gambardellarchitetti (Simona Ottieri Gambardella), House of bright stalactites, plan

Gambardellarchitetti (Simona Ottieri Gambardella), House of bright stalactites, sections

Gambardellarchitetti (Simona Ottieri Gambardella), House of bright stalactites, sketch

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Alessandro Benetti
30 June 2021
Naples, Italy
Gambardellarchitetti: Simona Ottieri Gambardella
private house
2021

Gambardellarchitetti’s House of bright stalactites, as its name suggests, is anything but a minimalist interior. Cherubino Gambardella and Simona Ottieri continue here their decade long research on the role of geometry, light and color as the fundamentals of domestic interiors that can trigger emotions. The house is a flat of just 52 square meters, that thick bearing walls divide in three small-scale main rooms – a bedroom, a living room and a dining room – complemented by the required servant spaces – a bathroom with anteroom and a kitchen. These are “the ingredients of a bourgeois cottage”, which is then completely reshuffled, challenged in its aesthetics by a masterly “Mediterranean and Corbusian game”.

Gambardellarchitetti (Simona Ottieri Gambardella), House of bright stalactites, Naples, Italy, 2021

Variously reprocessed memories of Gio Ponti and the Mare Nostrum, of Bernard Rudofski and Pompei suggest to turn each room into “a tub covered with Vietri sul Mare’s ceramic tiles”, each time of a different color – cyclamen for the bedroom, coral red for the living room, sea green for the dining room and so on, according to the sequence defined by Ottieri. From the same memories stems the monumental interpretation of thresholds as propylaea and the narrative of the room’s sequence as a promenade architecturale. What about the stalactites, then? They surface from the ceiling as geological concretions and become luminous. In Ottieri’s words, “they are similar but changeable geometries like those of a cave that we liked to abstract to unite everything under a white sky, a kind of clear corollary to this photonic storm to inhabit”.

Gambardellarchitetti (Simona Ottieri Gambardella), House of bright stalactites, Naples, Italy, 2021

House of bright stalactites
private house
Naples, Italy
Gambardellarchitetti: Simona Ottieri Gambardella
Alessandro Marotti Sciarra, Antonio Capolongo, Francesca Filosa, Antonella Mollo, Luigi Arcopinto
Cherubino Gambardella
Simona Ottieri Gambardella
D. & G. Costruzioni
2021

Gambardellarchitetti (Simona Ottieri Gambardella), House of bright stalactites, Naples, Italy, 2021

Gambardellarchitetti (Simona Ottieri Gambardella), House of bright stalactites, plan

Gambardellarchitetti (Simona Ottieri Gambardella), House of bright stalactites, sections

Gambardellarchitetti (Simona Ottieri Gambardella), House of bright stalactites, sketch

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House of bright stalactites is anything but a minimalist interior

In the project by Gambardellarchitetti, a masterly and feisty use of geometry, light and color challenges the aesthetics of a little bourgeois flat, turning it into a “photonic storm”.

View Article details

Sections

Specials

Magazine

House of bright stalactites is anything but a minimalist interior

In the project by Gambardellarchitetti, a masterly and feisty use of geometry, light and color challenges the aesthetics of a little bourgeois flat, turning it into a “photonic storm”.

View Article details

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