A holiday home in Nardò, in Salento, different from the usual, with a roof used as a terrace that becomes the fulcrum of shared life moments: it is Casa Piana, a period building that has been renovated with wisdom and grace by Studio Palomba Serafini for Moroseta Homes, selection of holiday homes immersed in the Apulian countryside. "It was an old Salento house, with rooms that followed one after the other, without a living space. Going up the stairs, located immediately in front of the entrance (which we kept as such), we reached the remained intact skylight”, architect Ludovica Serafini told us in the interview. The renovation intervention involved the entire building which is developped in three floors completely redesigned to accommodate four people. Originally the spaces were distributed according to an unconventional division, without a precise logic other than that typical of old houses. On the first floor "to the left of the skylight we found a storage room and a kitchen, which we converted into a bathroom, and a series of rooms, one inside the other, until they went all around the first floor. Taking the staircase again we then arrived at the upper floor, i.e. the rooftop. We demolished many walls to create this new open space in the new living area", continues Ludovica Serafini.
The kitchen on the rooftop
Unique both for its location and for the construction and materials used, the kitchen on the roof terrace is a small jewel of craftsmanship, which well expresses the creativity of the architects and which fits into a global project perspective. We asked Roberto Palomba and Ludovica Serafini what the customers' requests were first of all for the general concept of the living area and the new kitchen. "The owners asked us for a home with two bedrooms and two bathrooms and a bar area on the rooftop. No other requests; the clients entrusted themselves completely to our vision. By demolishing the spaces on the first floor, made up of rooms, one inside the other, we created the living room. It was essential to create a skylight because the living room was only lit from one side, the one with the glass window. The idea of the skylight, then, allowed us to move the kitchen right onto the last floor terrace.
The project for the kitchen space therefore has a complex basic idea from a structural point of view. "To create the skylight we drilled the attic and created a wall on the upper floor that connects to it", the two architects told us. "From there the idea of creating the kitchen on the rooftop was born, using that wall with the skylight as the only supporting wall. For the other sides, the kitchen is closed inside an iron and glass gazebo that we positioned in the center of the terrace, thus dividing the areas: a dining area outside, the kitchen in the center and the relaxation area on the other side".
The idea of bringing the kitchen to the top came from a customer request. They had asked us for a small bar, a support point on the rooftop, to open the terrace for aperitifs, open-air evenings and for exclusive events", conclude the architects. "So we we thought to relocate the kitchen there, making the rooftop even more scenographic and operational"..
