Architectural Record 2015-04

70
ARCHITECTURAL RECORD APRIL 2015 BUILDING TYPE STUDY RECORD HOUSES
$fter 30 years in their farmhouse outside Bolzano,
in northern Italy, and with their children grown
up, Josef Ebner and Angela Sabine Staffler found
themselves with surplus space and decided to
convert part of the property for rent. So they
created two apartments in their existing house
(where they still live) and a pair of mini-residences
in a new building, catering to tourists who flock to the
mountains of South Tyrol. Though the couple had no particular
intention that architecture should itself be a draw,
recalls Ebner, they wanted “something special” and called
in architect Peter Pichler, who had recently established his
own office in Bolzano after working for Zaha Hadid.
Permission from the local authorities to develop the site
imposed a strict limit on the interior volume of the new
building–sufficient for two dwellings, each 430 square feet,
with a ceiling height of 9 feet–and required that it should
sit just yards from the farmhouse. The location allowed the
new houses to face a private access road and apple orchards
beyond, but meant they would back onto the family’s
pool and block the view from the farmhouse’s garden.
Consequently, the clients’ only brief was that the building
should be “there but not there”; the design should make
a positive contribution to the landscape, while somehow
receding from view.
Pichler’s response was simple but effective. The woodframed
houses, which share a party wall, are cantilevered
off a poured-in-place concrete basement, so they appear to
float 6 inches off the ground, and are subtly distinguished
by slight offsets in plan and section. By cladding the garden
facade in six identical mirrored-glass panels, Pichler lent
the boxy form an abstract character reminiscent of a Donald
Judd sculpture. The flatness of the surface is given life
and depth by its surroundings. In the daytime, the facade
compensates for the lost mountain vista to the southeast by
reflecting hills to the northwest. At dusk, the building becomes
more enigmatic still. As the mirrored glass gathers
the last of the setting sun, it is also backlit by soft rectangles