PORTO CERVO

“ Fluid, embracing forms, natural and dressed stones, creations in wood as impressive as sculptures, all correspond to a precise decorative design.”

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To build a place to feel happy in: this is the ambition of many project designers, and it becomes all the more urgent when the task is to build a vacation home in a place already in itself happy. The achievement of this aim was certainly at the origin of this dwelling, like the many others that bear the signature of Michele Busiri Vici, a pioneering architect on the Emerald Coast. Recently renovated and enlarged, the house was modified in some respects, improved where necessary, and salvaged where radical maintenance was required. Every effort was made to conserve the spirit of its conception and to respect the philosophy of the architect, who wanted this house to function like a living organism, enclosed in soft, embracing walls, modelled as sand castles are modelled on the beach. Arches big and small, niches carved into the undulating walls, indoor and outdoor pathways that intersect and lead to the rooftop where the house opens up to the scenery: to work with these elements required the highly developed skills typical of the Filigheddu Costruzioni craftsmen, expertly attentive to the finishings and the many, many details. The materials used highlight the richness offered by the site: with an intense use not only of natural blocks of granite, but also of Orosei biancone, juniper wood, and handcrafted terracotta tiles. There were two important jobs to do: create a stairway from a blind, closed patio, and refurbish the rooftop terrace, where it is possible, thanks to its abundance of furnishing, to carry on a life parallel to the one indoors. The stairway departs from an inner courtyard paved in large, square granite paving stones, and winds its way upwards with bushhammered granite steps. The stonework is extraordinary: whoever dressed and laid the pieces must have known every secret about them, known how cut them with the same skill as a jeweller, smoothing their edges and joining them as a sculptor would, adapting them to the walls, rounding them off where necessary. The project designer and the contractors’ team offered yet another example of their refined skill and almost fanatical care in cladding a low wall that divides the living room into two areas: here, the opus incertum granite wall was sealed with molten lead and cold worked. When it is not dressed, but left natural, the stone requires no less precision, as can be seen in the imposing monoliths that serve as pillars in the arbour in front of the living room, in the large sheets that pave and line the outdoor shower (beneath a pergola with juniper beams), when it sits alongside the ashlars that describe an arch over a juniper wood door, or when it is carved out to form a flower box that accompanies a group of natural rocks framing the glass of a round window. Wood, too, inside and out, plays a decisive role. Mostly juniper, it can become a weightless handrail that accompanies the spiral staircase, a pergola woven together with raffia on the roof, the headboard of a bed, the support of the outdoor cooking hearth hood, even, using twisted trunks, a camouflage for the terrace shower plumbing. The most decorative aspect, where the colour nicely contrasts with the white of the walls, is the tiling of the bathrooms. A mosaic of glazed ceramic crystalline drops in colours of the sea alternated with more neutral tones covers the irregular walls of the master bathroom shower, or traces streams of water in the outdoor shower in Orosei biancone stone; medium-sized slab fragments of the same biancone were laid in a random pattern in the outdoor kitchen. Only the extremely high level of craftsmanship offered by members of the construction team enables this house to be what it is: a universe isolated from the surrounding context, the architecture of which reflects a desire to meet the wishes of who lives there.