“This project expresses my way of understanding and practicing architecture and it expresses my love for Salento, a place of real and ancient charm. I like to think of the project as a tactile and sensorial exploration of spaces and materials in a minimalist key, but also with particular attention to the atmosphere as an element of beauty. This is not only a holiday home, it also speaks of my need to escape from the excess of life, from noises, from the visual stimulations of the “scenic hypertrophy”. As you can imagine when you work by yourself you can finally get rid of conditionings and impediments, that are just heavy accessorizes that accompany your daily job. You can use your own language without any compromise or excuse, showing yourself in the most intimate way, especially when you are designing your own home. When you have the fortune to arrive in a place like this one, that provides the visitor special emotions and creates a particular atmosphere, the job is done, at least for me because I prefer to work by subtraction. Atmosphere as an element of beauty: this project expresses the role and the importance of this aspect of my work; to search a pause, a lost interval, secular tastes, smells of the Mediterranean (myrtle, licorice, thyme, rosemary) towards a void.

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