The “Cube House”, designed by young architects Andrea Schiattarella and Carla Maresca, is in Rome’s “Olympic Village”. This neighbourhood, built for the 1960 Olympics by the architects Moretti, Libera, Cafiero, Monaco and Luccichenti, and currently undergoing a significant renovation, thanks to the works of Zaha Adid and Renzo Piano, features buildings with open floor plans. This meant that, in renovating the original 49 m2 apartment, all the internal partitions could be eliminated, resulting in the formation of a single open space measuring 7m x 7m.
The home is thus laid out as a single unit in which a central element, in the form of a cube, divides and distributes its various functional areas without any interruptions: living, sleeping, cooking and bathing.
The central volume’s sliding panels and doors provide the option of different configurations of the space, so that privacy can be increased when necessary. The inside of the cube holds a roomy walk-in closet, while the outside is designed to complement the functions of the different areas: with a refrigerator and oven column on the kitchen side, a toilet and bidet niche on the bathroom side and containers and bookshelves on the living room side. By concentrating the required amount of containers inside the cube, the need for other furnishings was reduced, freeing up space inside the home. In this way, light is able to penetrate far into the inhabited space.
The black parquet floor creates a colour contrast with the cube and the home’s other white furnishings, highlighting its geometric purity. The cube is faced with OSB panels that have been finished in white lacquer and waxed, revamping and upgrading an economical, ecological material normally used for barriers around worksites. The comfortable shower unit is installed in full view of the night zone, with the possibility of being screened by a panel that slides out of the cube. The unit is constructed from a number of different sheets of glass that create an interplay of transparencies.
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