A New Skeleton in an Ancient Body by Vighy Traverso

When Giovanni and Paola Vighy Traverso, Italian architects from Vicenza faced the task of restoring a building near the ancient city walls of their town, have come to terms with a double problem: the conservation of the outside of the building and the need to recover the interior space to residential use in a functional way. A small project in the sense of dimension but a big challenge in terms of execution, specially considering that once again, we are in an historical area of an ITALIAN city, which means – nothing can be structurally modified.

The architects found a creative solution to this challenge in designing an internal ‘skeleton’ structure entirely made of prefabricated wood to be assembled and ‘installed’ inside the existing historical walls. Present and past seem to have found a coexistence in this stunning environment where old stone walls are in absolute harmony with the laminated larch. On top of the aesthetic pleasure, this solution has been designed in order for the internal wooden core to be a structurally independent unit which stabilizes the whole building. Form follows function, once again.

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