Bufalini Street Loft, Florence building, New Italian home, Music hall architecture restoration images

Bufalini Street Loft in Florence

Tuscany Interior Development design by FABBRICANOVE Architects, Italy

25 Feb 2017

Architects: FABBRICANOVE

Location: Florence, Tuscany, Italy

Bufalini Street Loft

Photos by Filippo Romano

Bufalini Street Loft

The Loft on Bufalini Street in Florence, in the very historical centre of the city, is the result of the restoration of an ex music hall.

The double-height space, with barrel vaulted and frescoed ceiling, has become a dwelling for a family with kids thanks to the project of FABBRICANOVE Architetti, an architectural studio founded in Florence in 2009 by Enzo Fontana, Giovanni Bartolozzi, Lorenzo Matteoli.

The idea: the storage box. In the solution of FABBRICANOVE, the big open space is articulated through the insertion of a double-high “core” with glass pavement that guarantees a uniform vertical perception. The walls of the “core” are realized as storage wood walls, opening inward and outward, which allows to divide the space into different parts with specific functions.

The storage walls, thanks to their thickness, are transformed into a library, office shelves, a kitchen pantry, vast bedroom shelves. ”In this way the store core is thematized by the function of the spaces. Kitchen, living room, dining room, studio and night zone appear in a relation between each other shaping a material and porous chest that confers visual and spatial continuity”, the designers explained.

The solution, that resembles the concept of machine à habiter, is revealed simultaneously functionally and formally. From one point of view it makes possible the distribution of spaces without losing the fascination of the memory connected to a place dedicated to the art of music, and from other point of view, it proposes an intervention in a contemporary language that becomes the protagonist of the space, without causing any loss, but expressing and enriching its potentiality.

Stratification, storage volumes/walls, attention to the detail. The loft project presents three supporting elements that re-occur in other projects of the team.

The functional and historical stratification, that manifests the capability to interpret the contemporaneity without violating the memory of the pre-existence; the insertion of store volumes walls and elements that articulate and redefine the place in different spaces; the attention to the detail, considering it as a worthy of attention element as much as any other part of the project. Hence in search of total quality.

Architects + Artisans. The box represents the real soul of the dwelling, thought as a sartorial work, in the search of a formula that is capable to identify the whole project as only one piece. All the furniture is handmade and realized according to the drawings of FABBRICANOVE: every detail is the result of a solid relation between designers and artisans, carpenters in particular.

The artisans appear as equal actors in a mutual contest giving the origin of the unique custom-made furniture.

Abstract art and functionality. The detail-oriented job of the architects and the artisans not only disregard casuality but, on the contrary, every element of the new body has its own specific purpose.

Drawers, shelves, flat flip-open surfaces create walls that resemble of a series of improvised paintings with a geometrical, abstract, linear design which echoes the studies of neo-Plasticism of Piet Mondrian or more precisely Theo Van Doesburg. By its design and mechanics, the store box of FABBRICANOVE, reminds of the Schröder House in Utrecht, the Netherlands, realized in 1924 by Gerrit Rietveld, one of the main interpreters of the Dutch neo-Plasticism, who, not by chance, comes from a carpenters family and in the family atelier he starts his educational path.

The custom-made house in Utrecht, exactly as that on Bufalini Street in Florence. Both thought with a sartorial attitude, nourished by artisan approach and vocation, the two interventions -the first as a new construction, the second as a restoration- confirm the attitude to observe the space as a motor for strategical solutions that focus on the interpretation of the inhabitants’ specific needs.

Bufalini Street Loft – Building Information

project: Loft on Bufalini Street, Florence, Italy
client: private
architectural design and direction of work: FABBRICANOVE (Firenze)
contractor: PFB, Pieve Santo Stefano (Arezzo, Italy)
schedule: design and start of construction / 2014, completion / 2015
dimensions: surface 300 square meter
cost of works: € 250.000