The context of the architectural intervention is the historic center of Meano, a small village near Trento which until 1926 was an autonomous municipality and which is situated on Monte Calisio along the ancient roman route of the Via Claudia Augusta. The intervention concerns two historic buildings adjacent to each other, part of an urban agglomeration called "el Canton" which is located around a horseshoe-shaped courtyard that has been built not far from the churchyard of Santa Maria Assunta. The buildings of the agglomeration are part of the rustic houses owned by the noble curia Sardagna, owner of the homonymous villa that forms the internal courtyard, with the characteristic typology of the traditional rural peasant court of Trentino.
Each building corresponds to a functionally autonomous housing unit and the aim of the project is to completely redefine the internal layout to create a single larger housing unit.
In order to do this, the project intends to transform the outdoor space of the terrace, placed between the existing houses, into a new living room. This space becomes the connection space between the various levels of the house, the fulcrum between the living and sleeping areas.
Thus, starting from the entrance on the first floor through a system of stairways arranged around the central spine wall, it is possible to reach the kitchen, continuing towards the living room and entering the sleeping area or going up again to the attic.
The great variety of spaces and atmospheres is generated by the choice of materials and detail solutions that give coherence to the intervention: oak wood for the floors, natural larch wood for the exposed beams in the sleeping area, dark-colored impregnated larch wood for the windows, white painted metal for the stairs, resin for the bathrooms and the entrance area.
Externally, only the portion of the building corresponding to the terrace has been transformed, modifying the openings and revisiting the traditional “Trentino” balcony. With regard to the windows, it was decided to widen the large window towards the internal courtyard, repositioning those towards the crenellated walls of the Villa Salvadori Zanatta. A new large fixed window has been placed at a higher level, facing towards south to frame the sky and to illuminate the space of the living room, whereas a smaller one has been positioned at a lower level to show the walls and to allow the ventilation of the room. For the balcony, it was decided to double the wooden posts, fixing the horizontal wooden laths from the inside and adopting a particular interlocking corner solution.
The facade materials are also reduced to the essentials: natural hydraulic lime mortar for the walls, dark-colored impregnated larch wood for the window frames, the roof, the staircase and the balcony.
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