Architecture studio Celoria Architects has completed Haus C, a concrete house in Mendrisio, Switzerland, which is the region’s crotti- cellar-like communal spaces where local cuisine is served.
designed StudioFor its founder, Alto Celoria, the house’s basement is a traditional cellar and dining area excavated from the sloping site, which Celoria’s family looked after.
Alluding to this history, the house is designed as what Seloria describes as a „massive antique embedded in the mountain,” centered around a large kitchen and dining room.
„When we were kids we would go out to lunch or dinner with friends or sit in front of the fireplace and eat chestnuts,” Seloria told Dezeen.
„The project evolved to maintain this interesting feeling and to design a house like a castle in relation to the surrounding nature,” he explained.
House C is organized around four concrete cores at the edges of its square plan, each finished with wave-like sections of concrete wall.
Acting as massive, hollow columns, these concrete forms have applications including the home’s infrastructure and spiral staircases, bathrooms, utility rooms, and fireplaces.
This renders the remaining floor plates column-free, allowing unobstructed views through full-height windows and glazed corners that overlook the landscape.
„The infrastructural elements of the house curve inward, framing the central square space of each floor, which increases in size towards the upper spaces,” Celoria explained.
„The structure is therefore an expression of the architectural system, designed to encourage an intimate dialogue between interior and exterior and architecture and landscape,” he added.
The bedrooms use the partially underground ground floor to provide more privacy, with the main entrance to the house being the living, dining and kitchen floor above.
On the second floor of the house, a single multipurpose space sits on the roof of the house beneath a diamond-shaped skylight and is surrounded by fully glazed walls.
Seloria Architects kept as much monolithic concrete as possible in the interiors, using wood for doors, stairs and kitchen counters, and a fir dining table to represent the old table the family used for dinner on site.
„It’s important to work with a single object and convey a monochromatic atmosphere,” Seloria told Dezeen.
Elsewhere in Switzerland, architecture studio PPAA recently completed a concrete villa overlooking Lake Zurich and Atelier Rampazzi created three concrete houses with warm wood panelling.
„Totalny pionier w sieci. Specjalista od piwa niezależny. Ewangelista popkultury. Miłośnik muzyki. Nieprzepraszający przedsiębiorca”.