Architecture Wednesday: Villa P

This house; it’s kind of impressive, no?

Oh, that’s not it, that chalet-looking thing at the top; and it’s neither one of the buildings to the right or left. It’s that black scar slightly down the hill.

The architect, working with the existing lynchets — banks of earth built up on the downslope of a field ploughed over eons — and with the natural stone walls of the field, the architects created this home for a winemaker in Novacella, Brixen, Italy … high in  the Alps.

The building has become part of the existing cultivated landscape, with its lynchets and typical stone masonry walls of a former winery. But then a second wall — created to frame the home — is colored with the black pigments of the grapevines.

This creates what appears to be a continuation of a centuries old wall and the shadow it cast upon the hillside, creating the winemaker’s home.

But it’s still a house, a simple one that becomes part of the landscape when the grapes are growing, and become quite noticeable when the fields are bare.

Did I mention there’s wine? And views?

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