In Ragusa (Sicily) the architect Giuseppe Gurrieri has recently completed Casa K: the project aims at the restoration of the ground floor of the patronal house of a late Nineteenth century farmhouse located in the Val di Noto, an area surrounded by green rolling hills and rural estates.
The project works on the dualism between the tradition and the innovation; the ancient charm of the property has been redesigned with solutions that have deeply renewed the spaces, their functions and the image of the patronal house itself.
Originally the main entrance of Casa K was on the ground floor from where it was possible to reach the central stairs that lead to the patronal house on the first floor; on the sides of the entrance there where two separate stables: the project readjusts the space thanks to a new passage that was made in the basement of the stairs, demolishing the wall and creating a comunication between the two stables; the new accomodation of the owner was built following a circular scheme around the stairs.
The same scheme was adopted for the whole plant of the building, creating a path that gradually leads to the more and more intimate areas of the house: a sort of central visual axis winds continuously among the rooms, from the living room to the dining area, arriving till the reading corner, and from there to the bedroom and the bathroom that overlooks the courtyard again.
The pattern of the floors, a decorative texture made with monochrome concrete tiles, changes color from one room to another, going from white to green and black, and creates a surprising effect together with the transverse tir doorsteps.
All the vaulted ceilings and the existing stone portions of hard limestone have been restored, while the most deteriorated stone walls have been covered and completed with lime-based plaster.
The goal was to make this simple and essential layout, characterized by interconnections and linear and curved chains, an all-round landscape where the furnishing solutions and the interior design have the important task of strengthening the union between the architecture philosophy and its rustic materiality.
