Two storey contemporary villa located in the Rolling Hills Luxury Residences in Tirana, Albania

Architects: Studio Marco Piva
Location: Tirana, Albania
Year: 2016
Photo courtesy: Andrea Martiradonna
Description:

“Studio Marco Piva, together with the local architect EGO Architecture di Egest Goxhaj & Partners, has curated the interior design of a villa situated in the heart of the new residential development area known as “Rolling Hills Luxury Residences”, composed by 122 luxury villas plunged in the green hills south-east of Tirana.

The project result reflects Studio Marco Piva’s and EGO Architecture di Egest Goxhaj & Partners’ sober, but elegant and refined designing style, characterised by a genuine richness expressed through furniture and finishing details. The project aim has been to create cosy, pleasant, partly spectacular, and yet aesthetically modern spaces, capable of suiting, above all, the daily experience of people who live there.

We are very happy because the client has absolutely trusted our choices, and we have thus rediscovered that trust-based relationship with the professional designer often lacking in our day. The result has therefore satisfied the two sides: first of all, the client, and then us, as we have developed a project in which we identify ourselves. With regard to the choices we have made, the entire mood has been developed on the basis of some architectural and territorial elements by which we have been highly impressed.

The villa is surrounded by an unspoilt natural environment which does not present any invasive infrastructure or architecture, turning every point of view from the house on the outside into a picture. As a matter of fact, although it is part of a compound, most of the house façades have a very large visual depth, which has suggested the use of certain chromatic patterns, colours which draw on the territory’s nature in the various periods of the year, in a sort of attempt to capture a piece of landscape and bring it inside the villa.

For example, the green sofas in the formal living recall the fields of olive trees in the hills, the pink colour of the seats in the master bedroom and of the curtains in the living room are expression of the colour of flowers in spring, the yellow at the entrance reflects the citrus trees, whereas the combination of grey and blue of carpets and of some seats recalls the Tirana Lake, the caramel corridor on the first floor suggests the colours of sunset, etc.

A specific chromatic research has also been carried out in connection with the artworks to be placed in the space under consideration. The combination of colours has been taken into account in connection with the carpets, all of which chromatically match the coverings, the materials, and the chromatic patterns, which have been chosen.

A neutral colour has been used for façades, with an emphasis put on the architectural elements by the Lecce stone, also used for the floor and the pool, creating a soft contrast with the surrounding green. The villa complex that mirrors in the big swimming pool constitutes a particularly suggestive scenario. In the design phase, particular attention has also been reserved to the choice of the tree species, with the intention of representing the various seasons through colours. The trees, most of which are from the Mediterranean area, interact with the surrounding natural green.

LIGHTING AND TECHNOLOGY

Technology is there but unseen.

Both the main villa and the Guest House have been conceived with a latest-generation home automation system created by BPT, which integrates the most important functions for home control, including internal and external lighting, shutters, video-surveillance system, air conditioning system, door closure system, etc.

This is a complex, centralized system, which manages a big number of controls through a simple graphic interface, to make it easier for the client to control their house, even remotely (just think there are more than one hundred controls only for lighting points, some of which are situated hundreds of metres away from the villa).

The centralised heating/conditioning system is of the VRF type by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries. Moreover, considering the heights of the ground floor, a floor heating has been integrated for greater efficiency.

As regards the lighting, several accurate and specific lighting solutions have been developed for each room. In general, we have enriched the spaces on the ground floor and on the first floor with decorative and spectacular, sometimes suspended, lamps. This has been possible thanks to the heights of such spaces. On the contrary, downstairs, where heights are substantially reduced, a more technical and linear lighting has been preferred.

The exploitation of natural light has always been the core of our approach. In this case, however, it has been even more relevant in view of the abundance of windows all along the façade: all the spaces have been organised in such a way as to benefit from light, including both natural light, which penetrates the house extensively during daytime, and technical and decorative light, enabling various combinations depending on how the spaces are used during the various moments of the day.

Technical lighting has been curated in cooperation with Zumtobel, studying a system of visual exclusion through the arrangement of grooves in suspended ceilings, to insert accurate and adjustable lights. The technical lighting system has had a fundamental role above all in the Art gallery, with masks specifically designed to emphasize the beauty of artworks.

Moreover, it has been relevant the choice to use Barrisol in various rooms of the house due to its neutral and uniform lighting. It has been used in bathrooms, which are the only rooms in the house reached by little daylight.

The use of Barrisol has also been very important in the Art Gallery to prepare an environment as neutral as possible, capable of better adapting to the various types of display. The external colonnade leading to the Gallery has been illuminated with a Barrisol ceiling too, to give a sense of continuity between interior and exterior.”

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