Around a Void by Associates Architecture
Around a Void is the project for an apartment designed by Associates Architecture, located in Brescia’s historic centre, in an early 20th century building with only three units.
The square-shaped layout, with openings on each side, organizes the living areas [kitchen, dining room, living room, bedrooms, and bathrooms] around a large central void, conceived as a place that divides but at the same time connects.This void becomes an element of spatial and temporal transition that generates expectation. It is a physical and climatic threshold between one room and another. It is a place of penumbra and promise of light.
A hybrid void without a precise function other than that of generating awareness in those who pass through it, moving from one room to another. Moving from the living area to the sleeping one, and then to the bathrooms and vice versa, through the void, defines the houses’ rituals of living.
In Around a Void all the infrastructures at the service of the living are contained within a long spine equipped in oak wood that crosses the apartment tangentially to the void. Around the entire perimeter of the apartment, a membrane of long linen curtains has been designed to screen the sunlight, defining a suspended atmosphere. The apartment was built with natural materials such as cement, travertine, oak, lime and linen.
