Article source: Lapo Ruffi Architetti / LRA 

The project was realised as a replacement of an old greenhouse to accommodate the growing collection of citrus trees during the colder months. Cultivators for passion, the client requested a new service building, a little architecture able to contain a room for tree winter rest and a storage room for agricultural tools but also a space for silence and meditation among the plants. This design reveals the mechanism that simultaneously enchances architecture and nature: the contrast between the artificial character of the former and the organic traits of the latter. The main building material is natural larch wood. The façades are made of rough sawn wooden slats, which are attached to the inner wooden structure along with polycarbonate. The slope of the roof is designed to be a continuation of the façade, maintaining the integrity of the volume. Besides meeting some pragmatic functions the project developed to become a study on transparency and translucency. During the day it becomes translucent while polycarbonate panels diffuse sunlight, and at night, the pavilion become floating sculptural lantern in the hills’ horizon. An architecture capable of preserving the richness and uniqueness of the place while inserting into the landscape a further fragment of landscape, in an effort to bring not only to construct an object but to create an artificial place or landscape.

Image Courtesy © Lapo Ruffi

• Architects: Lapo Ruffi Architetti / LRA
• Project: M Greenhouse
• Location: Pistoia, Italy
• Photography: Lapo Ruffi
• Gross Floor Area: 115 m²
• Design Phase: 06.2015 – 11.2015
• Construction Phase: 12.2015 – 03.2016

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