BARN VS PAVILLION
Barn VS Pavilion is the story – a two-year-long journey – of a mutual conflict between architect and client, confronting themselves with the expressive language of two distinct architectural types.
Barn is the building that hosts the pharmacy. It reinterprets the Venetian countryside’s rural constructive tradition, especially the one rooted in Treviso area. It is made of few, yet sophisticated, elements: the base, the jealousy, the eaves, the sloping roof, the timber beams, the projecting roof, the window frames, the color, the lamps. These elements relate to each other according to a precise and distinguishable system of proportion.
Guided by a beautiful painting by the Tuscan painter Oscar Ghiglia (from the client’s private collection), each element is the shared outcome of the articulate dialogue between architect and client.
The roof’s outline, for instance, must be extremely thin, according to tradition. Thus, it must dissemble the great thickness of the insulating block. The timber beams are arranged at a precise pitch, imposed by the hollow tiles’ module. The beams’ ends are shaped in order for the water to easily glide down. The copper gutters are custom-tailored. The plastered volume does not touch the timber beams, hence enhancing the roofing’s crucial role in the building. The roof tiles’ arrangement completes the work on the roof covering: roof tiles are slightly set back from the roof edge.
The jealousy, traditionally used to improve air circulation, represents the complex building’s identity: elements from the tradition are transferred to contemporary times. The projecting roof has been recovered from the original building, and has been modified and improved with a thin 3-mm-thick metal sheet, specifically designed for the site. The color shades take inspiration from the context, in particular from the former bakery located near the site.
The intervention involved a compositional study of the facade: with regards to forometry, the window frames are set back from the façade, as they could not be protagonist of the façade’s overall image.
Pavilion deliberately breaks from the conception of traditional building. The search for great lighting and the demand for a quick construction guided the conception of the building designated to the Health Center, which resulted in the use of prefabricated elements, that were then assembled into reinforced concrete, and some hand-brushed cast-in-place concrete insertions. The project involves a wide area destined to reception, as part of a wider landscape project, which is hold together by a 12-meter-long concrete bench, expanding the boundaries of the waiting room which becomes a collective space. Inside, the space is organized along a delicate curve that accelerates the transversal perspective from the entrance to the exit.
The rest is left white, a sort of not-a-color. The main door and window frames are made in weathering steel, and participate to the precise definition of the space and of the overall image of the building. The pivot hinge door is conceived to take part in the entrance experience.
