John Pawson

Casa delle Bottere . Veneto

photos Marco Zanta . + John Pawson . impresacev . wallpaper . Plain Space

The peaks of the Dolomites form a dramatic backdrop to the low plains of the Veneto.

The land here has an unmistakable agricultural quality, embodied in the repeating extended lines of vineyards, orchards, ploughed furrows and irrigation channels. Prosperous for centuries, the region has a great tradition of commissioning private houses, in the sixteenth century most famously from Andrea Palladio and more recently from Carlo Scarpa and Tadao Ando.

This commission involves the creation of a family house, pool and private chapel on the cleared estate of ‘Casa delle Bottere’. Initial impressions of the architecture are confined to a series of oblique, glimpsed views, as the drive plots its sinuous course between trees before sloping down a gentle ramp and into a deep cut. The house itself is set within the cut, comprising a single storey above basement. The side walls of the house rest on the retaining walls of the excavation, stopping short to create a sunken courtyard to the west. In a defining gesture, the central roof plane rises almost imperceptibly from the east elevation, its refined lines converging at the apex of a pitched gable on the western façade.