Casa Gesso is a “liveable clean canvas” for reflecting on feminist artwork
This site contains affiliate links. I may earn a small commission, at no extra cost to you.
Dwelling areas are organized round a central courtyard at this home in Valencia, Spain, which native studio Viruta Lab has designed to have fun the legacy of influential feminist artist Ángela García Codoñer.
Casa Gesso goals to determine a dialogue between up to date structure and a number of the pioneering work created by the artist within the Nineteen Seventies, deconstructing how ladies have been historically portrayed in Spanish society.
Viruta Lab founders David Puerta and María Daroz are followers of García Codoñer, who’s greatest recognized for her collages, display screen prints and acrylic work that includes stylised depictions of the feminine type.
García Codoñer was additionally Puerta’s professor on the Valencia Faculty of Structure and later his mentor on the college’s Inventive Heritage Fund.
He defined that the artist’s strategy to color and type knowledgeable the fabric palette and minimalist aesthetic of the home, which he described as a “liveable clean canvas” for reflecting on her work.
“In essence, it’s a residence that permits one to inhabit the concepts of Ángela García Codoñer and demonstrates that residential areas can be conceived for reflection and questioning established norms,” the duo stated.
The 145-square-metre property within the suburb of Picanya consists of two volumes that mirror the completely different heights of the neighbouring buildings.
The principle residing areas are contained inside a one-and-a-half-storey excessive construction that adjoins a two-storey excessive block housing the bedrooms and bogs.
The constructing’s facades are clad with vertical bone-white porcelain tiles chosen to evoke the normal washhouses that after housed native artists’ studios.
A courtyard on the centre of the home supplies pure gentle and air flow to the lounge and kitchen-dining room positioned on both aspect.
This house is clad with the identical porcelain tiles because the facades to create a way of continuity between inside and exterior, whereas a piece of the adjoining hallway flooring is completed with slimline tiles to match the courtyard’s floor.
“The day space sequence consists of three fully pure architectural prisms, geometrically and visually uninterrupted, with the second being a void positioned between two solids, emphasising views by means of transparency,” Puerta instructed Dezeen.
“These volumes are designed as good areas of calm and contemplation, appropriate for working or exhibiting artworks like an exhibition corridor, thus projected with half-height ceilings.”
Every of the residing areas in Casa Gesso was impressed by a specific collection in García Codoñer’s oeuvre, with furnishings, materials and synthetic lighting chosen to bolster their completely different themes.
“Inside the design’s wealthy particulars, the impact of calm and unity permits Ángela García Codoñer’s work to dominate the house, turning into the architectural protagonist, supported by altering components like gentle that make their nuances vibrate in numerous methods,” stated Daroz.
The lounge on the residence’s entrance homes a 1979 work from her Labores collection exploring historically feminine handicrafts, which Viruta Lab referenced by means of the inclusion of rugs, upholstery components and ornamental particulars that evoke cross-stitch.
A portray from the 1973 Morfologías collection, during which García Codoñer deconstructed the best way ladies are portrayed in Spanish society, options within the kitchen. Right here, rounded types recall the sinuous shapes discovered within the work, whereas a feminine bust supplies a focus within the courtyard.
A wall that extends the total size of the home and separates its two programmatic volumes is lined with storage that comes with a door resulting in a hid staircase connecting the 2 flooring.
The principle bed room homes a 1974 collage from the Misses collection, which denounced the objectification of girls in magnificence pageants. The work is paired with a tweed headboard alluding to the meticulous “development” of the feminine picture, in addition to the artist’s collage work.
A pared-back materials palette creates a way of heat and neutrality all through the inside. Giant-format porcelain tiles used for the flooring are complemented by the pure tone of the stained-oak cabinetry, whereas upholstery introduces a softer component to the scheme.
The architects instructed Dezeen that the best way Casa Gesso is organised and embellished leads to areas which are appropriate for observing and experiencing García Codoñer’s work, with out explicitly feeling like an exhibition.
“Structure, with its constraints, was designed to completely reply to the preliminary idea, and along with materiality, they cohesively created this universe of reflection,” Daroz stated.
“Areas possess particular features and are created for actions however we tried to blur the inflexible traces limiting them, enabling them to serve functions past their preliminary design.”
Daroz and Puerta based Viruta Lab in 2020 as a mirrored image of their shared inventive and architectural passions. The studio goals to ship natural, heat and timeless areas that stability perform with emotion.
Earlier tasks by Viruta Lab embrace the renovation of a former fisherman’s home in Valencia’s El Cabanyal neighbourhood, that includes chequerboard tiles that reference the constructing’s nautical heritage.
The pictures is by David Zarzoso.