Stereophonic House

Melting the pleasure of conviviality and the attitude to host with the need for functionality, also because there are kids in the family: this is the challenge taken up by architect Daniele Marcotulli for the renovation of a large apartment in a historic building in the Mazzini district in Rome, where the bourgeois tradition of the capital is animated by an intense working and commercial life.

To meet the owners' wishes, the project subverts the initial setting of the rooms and the long corridors, to recreate a home guided by light and fluid relationships between functions. The house is organized into two parallel environments: the access one, dedicated to the large living area and the steel kitchen at the back, and the second, more intimate, divided into three bedrooms, two bathrooms and a closet. The two areas come into contact through a central spine wall, somehow hidden by a custom-equipped system which, by alternating wooden containing parts and mirrored surfaces, creates illusory effects playing with light, solids and voids.

Marcotulli, together with Marantico for styling has chosen a neutral atmosphere, with surfaces with homogeneous and soft tones so to be caught mainly by contrast, both in colors and in materiality.

“The Roman tradition is expressed as a memory, an echo, leading to an imaginary of sophisticated spaces with an uncodified flavour, open to even heterogeneous inserts”.

The cold light grey resin concrete floor is interrupted by large Venetian terrazzo carpets; the walls show a warmer color, with pinkish shades. The dark wenge-stained oak wood that wraps the central spine wall, resonates with the soft tones of the walls and ceiling, becoming a guiding element of the project.

“The large mirrored surfaces that invade the wooden lining of the wall conceal its architectural limits, amplify the light and create unexpected visual glimpses”.

The Scotch Brite stainless steel kitchen is the scenic backdrop to the living area: the cold industrial finish enhances its synthetic forms, in dissonance with the warm walls and dark wood, or in assonance with the resin cement on the floor.

“During the demolition phase, some columns of the heating system were found in the center of the living room, and we chose to hide in fake stainless steel coin carter metal columns, to which add custom-made light columns".

Therefore, the choice was also the opportunity to systematize the lighting of the living area, already imagined with horizontally suspended light tubes, with the new vertically arranged lighting fixtures, so as to make it a fundamental part of the project.
In the bathrooms, the glass mosaics - the ruby red coverings in the bathroom with bathtub and ice white in the one with shower - are in dialogue with the marble tops that surround the sinks, following an approach of composed eclecticism.

Architect: Daniele Marcotulli
Styling: Adriana Suriano