A house dating back to the fourteenth century and set in an ancient village in the hills of Reggio Emilia (Italy), with the evocative name of Ca’ Caprari, has become the home of architect Giulia Delpiano and designer Corrado Conti, owners of the architectural studio ovre.design® in Reggio Emilia.
The house had undergone a previous architectural and structural renovation by Corrado Conti’s father: Fausto Conti, a passionate collector of medieval and renaissance art. Thanks to his deep experience and knowledge of the architectural and artistic landscape of the Reggio Emilia Apennines, Fausto Conti completed a restoration characterized by an important respect for the artistic heritage of the territory. When the house became the home of Giulia and Corrado, the two architects integrated the historical pieces belonging to their father’s collections with a different historical vision, where vintage is combined by suggestions of modernity, in a multifaceted historical dialectic rich in references.
The house is developed on two levels connected by a central staircase in glass and Corten that constitutes a very modern axis at the centre of the house, topped by a characteristic architrave with double shelves. Engraved in the architrave, the date 1512 and the six-pointed rose, solar symbol, which emphasizes the entrance to the main floor.
The various rooms of the house, from the living room to the kitchen, to the “study” area up to the master bedroom are the result of a careful work of research in which it is possible to find a philological association of local historical elements with characteristics of modernity both at stylistic and functional level.
All the finishes, doors and windows, floors and walls date back to the Middle Ages and the Renaissance period, were recovered from villas and palaces in the Reggio Emilia area.
The oak floors are also recovered from historic buildings as well as for the fireplaces and stones that bear the spirit of the “genius loci” of belonging to the territory where the house is located. The light is the protagonist throughout the house with its games between glass and stone.
“We really love – as Giulia Delpiano states – the historical layering, such as the fiberglass sign with an eighteenth-century door and a piece of design furniture. This is a feeling from our American years, in which the absence of Italian history has accentuated even more the sense of belonging to a collective and individual journey of the tradition.”
