Location: Benevento, Italy
Year: 2017
Category: architecture
Type: residential
Customer: private
Status: built
Area: 570 sqm
Design and construction management: Mario Coppola
Construction: Gioacchino Simeone Costruzioni s.r.l.s., Claudio Scala (coatings)

Tree House (2017) is the energy-efficient renovation of an eighteenth-century building on three levels, subsequently divided into three residential units.

The project recomposes and reorganizes the rooms in a B&B characterized by the coexistence of the ancient restored facades with continuous and dynamic interiors, described by a topological “skin” in masonry, plasterboard and wood. Made through a hybrid process, which combines digital design and manufacturing (parts in wood or CNC-cut polyurethane) with traditional manual processing, the surface wraps and interconnects the common spaces, hosts more than 120 plants of 21 different species, encloses the lighting system, heating and irrigation systems and equips the rooms by transforming itself into containers and seats. A central “well”, in which the staircase develops, connects all the spaces bringing light and vegetation, and, on the ground floor, a large flowerbed houses a niche of biodiversity.

The project was exhibited at the Milan Triennale from 12 October to 13 November 2018 and published on Domus 1029.