In the heart of the Sorrento Peninsula, a large olive grove represents the visual and sentimental source of inspiration for the most recent renovation and interior design project by architect Valentina Autiero, founder of the eponymous architectural and design practice. The Neapolitan architect’s visionary and spectacular design language has thus reinterpreted a detached residence of just 500 square feet, where the bright colors of the dense surrounding vegetation, set in close dialogue with the sunlight, define the project’s guidelines and become a source of inspiration for all the interpretative choices of the spaces.
The small size of the property is broken down into a floor plan that was already rigidly defined by the thick load-bearing walls that determine its structural conformation, and feature some unusual pre-existing penetrations. These non-negotiable elements forced the architect to take on the project in an extremely rigorous and aware fashion, through an almost therapeutic analysis of everything which is genuinely essential, and therefore indispensable, in order to live in the space.
On the basis of this key concept, the design pathway favored an open stylistic line, in whose context the search for the genuinely essential dictates the rhythm and guides the entire management of the spaces. It thus takes on the philosophy of liberating oneself from useless baggage and returning value to the space to allow it to be lived without being occupied, in the newfound freedom to audaciously configure a quotidian identity of living with original and unconventional features. The design project therefore features open, fluid and convivial spaces: inside them, the various functions are free to interact without clashing, and every space focuses on a precise moment of day-to-day living, which is expressed in an autonomous yet not isolated manner; at the same time, visual dialogues which do not prevaricate connect the various functions together through stylistic echoes which accompany the interpretation of the entire residence.
The entire residence boasts a continuity of colors clearly inspired by the outside garden and the plant species which surround it: the dominant palette includes aubergine-purple, yellow and green which, through infinite shades, accents and desaturation, denote the figurative identity of each individual design element, thus delineating an effervescent visual rebound between the parts, a definition of a compositional and formal whole with great impact and personality.
Photography by Carlo Oriente.
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