The site of the Pineta di Arenzano is characterized by a high rocky slope populated by a dense vegetation of “macchia mediterranea”.
The strategic choice was to “lay down” the new buildings on the existing orography on two different levels so as to limit clutter and thus consume less area without altering the site morphology.
The project seeks the maximum porosity between the land and the sea, drawing spaces semi in-out, open-closed, opaque-transparent which are designed differently in each housing unit.
For this reason, the five units of the complex have been developed by a team of five architects from OBR and A2BC who interpreted in different ways the same architectural theme, thus avoiding the repetition of the same building type, while quoting (and re-interpreting) some architectural elements typical and recurrent in Pineta (such as dry stone walls, the splay of white plaster, the green roof).
While dry walls help the camouflage process of the new project into the site, the splay (of walls and ceilings) reverses the perception of the thickness of visual elements from the sea and, therefore, the involved volumes become a composition of horizontal and vertical surfaces (rather than volumes) that create generous shadows on the backward windows: in this way the natural context will be better reflected, limiting the visual impact from the sea.