Golden Box

The refurbishment of a small flat in the city centre of Arzignano, signed by the award-winning AMAA Collaborative Architecture Office For Research And Development, takes shape thanks to fine materials and a peculiar attention to construction details.
A single five-metre square plant box contains all the spaces and fixed furnishings to inhabit an original room of slightly larger dimensions: inside it are minimal compartments for the kitchen wall, the living room, the bed and the bathroom.

The box is entirely covered with acid-etched brass that, with its warm golden nuances and cloudy texture, triggers a refined play of chromatic and material contrasts with Pibamarmi's Verde Barcellona marble, used for the kitchen and bathroom surfaces, and with the velvets and other fabrics used to line the other spaces.
The attention to detail is entirely handcrafted and reaches its maximum sartorial expression in the frames that conceal the joints between the materials and in the edge solutions of the countertops.

A porthole between the living area and the sleeping area, as well as a curved glass cut at the edge of the bathroom, open up unexpected goals of visual permeability in a composition that is in any case always dynamic, also thanks to the slightly rotated position of the new box with respect to the perimeter of the house; and reinforcing the peculiarities of a unique piece, skilfully constructed thanks to AMAA and a pool of high-profile suppliers and craftsmen, are the additional material dialogues between the golden box and the Palladian floor and twentieth-century stuccoes existing in the flat and still preserved.

- by Davide Turrini