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A countryside shell in southern Lazio gains a single, perfect aperture—and a new way of living inside.
The commission arrived halfway built: concrete frame up, timber roof on, infill walls already closing off what might have been views. SET Architects read the half-finished house not as a problem but as a prompt, keeping the volume yet stripping the plan back to first principles. The young family who will live here asked for openness, daylight, and a clearer bond with the surrounding orchards of Fondi, Italy. The architects’ answer is almost surgical: carve away partitions until the ground floor reads as one continuous room, then anchor that flow with a service core that hides the kitchen’s utilities and backs the freestanding stair. The stair itself—once boxed in—now floats as a pale timber spine, its only guard a pencil-thin rail of stainless steel that catches the afternoon sun like a drawn line.
Material decisions reinforce the quiet shift from conventional to considered. Continuous micro-cement floors erase thresholds; natural oak cabinetry and stair treads pick up the muted browns of ploughed fields; light plaster walls keep the eye on volume rather than decoration. Outside, the existing mass is restrained by a coat of chalk-white plaster, cut only where new openings matter. On the south façade two glass sliders pull the living space into the garden, while a single, oversized square window on the upper level frames a cinematic slice of the Pontine plain. Smaller side apertures modulate privacy, and thin recesses around every opening throw crisp shadows across the white surface—an abstract nod to the stringcourses of old farmhouses without leaning on pastiche.
Landscaping completes the edit. A band of newly planted trees filters neighbouring plots, concrete paving slips from threshold to patio without a level change, and low beds of native grasses keep maintenance light. The result is a house that owns its rural archetype yet resists nostalgia: a pared-back shell tuned to contemporary patterns of movement, where family life drifts unimpeded from kitchen island to garden edge, always under the gaze of that square window—equal parts picture frame and compass for the day’s changing light.
Photography by Willem Pab.
