This is a proposal for a single house (about 80 square meters) situated on the top of a hill just behind the city of Ancona (in the center of Italy). The site is located in a park classified area. Parco del Conero is a nature sanctuary extending for 5800 hectares of protected area, with places of great charm: the bay of Portonovo, the beach of the “due sorelle”, the northern view-point, Pian Grande, pian dei Raggetti; 18 hiking routes developing among strawberry trees, brooms, ilex trees, pines, in the magic of the Mediterranean maquis. The area houses several species of birds, some of them very rare, together with a rich fauna. The many plants making the Mediterranean maquis are here protected and represent the third part of the whole floristic heritage of Marche (the italian region where it is located).
The terrain’s owner is a young lady who loves nature and animals, strictly vegetarian and wellness interested. The project attempts to approach the concept of living within nature in a different way, trying to reach both the interest and respect of the site with the client’s expectations. Instead of using the hill as a garden and basement, the house is elevated using four pilotis to occupy less as possible the site and allow vertical distribution of flowerpots, plants and vegetables boxes, which are fixed in to a steel multystories structure. Whit this system of optimized cultivation’s control concerning earth, water, insolation and wind, the house acts just like a greenhouse. On the top of the hill the views of the waterfront and the sea are great and this direction perfectly fits with a house best orientation at this latitude (the east-west axe, lightly shifted on north) towards the sun path, to get sunshine early in the morning and late in the afternoon. During winter the greenhouse balcons will be covered by plastic material all around their perimeter to protect plants and buds from being frosted and also to get warmer inside and acting as a heat generator that will warm the air inside to reach the top of the house.During the summer the open green balconies let the wind pass through and provide a shaded and colorful flowers garden (a well protected space), and let freshness and humidity act during the evening and night. The project tries to deal within the actual discussion about sustainable developpement in architecture, not just using ecological solutions such as rain water recycling and renewable energy sources like sun or wind (everywhere adaptable by now) but suggesting a different way of living. Less consumption and wasting but most of all, self producting (according to the bio-diversity of the region) and exchange in a kind of self sufficient way and symbiosis with nature. Concerning this purpose, the pillars could become shelters for the small mammals living in this area and for several species of birds (a sort of Naoh’s ark), in the same way as the park shelters the house.
