Eligo Studio has a special relationship with Liguria. From the Milanese design practice’s very beginnings, its founders, Alberto Nespoli and Domenico Rocca, have been in love with the cultural heritage of this fascinating coastal region of Italy. And it’s here that their newest project, Casa Arosio, a modernist treasure originally designed by Italian master Vico Magistretti, is located.
The duo were not the first to turn their attention to Liguria, which stretches along the coastline around Genoa. The area has attracted the Milanese since the 1950s, when architects such as Gio Ponti, Luigi Caccia Dominioni and Gianfranco Frattini discovered the richness of the local landscape and artisan skills. ‘This project started when our friend, the owner of concept store Via Garibaldi in Genoa, informed us that Casa Arosio was for sale. When we saw it, we immediately asked one of our clients if she would like to buy it. And she agreed,’ explains Nespoli.
Tour the refreshed Casa Arosio in Liguria, Italy
Eligo Studio is currently working on a further ten projects in Liguria. Some of them are located in the same district as Casa Arosio, Pineta di Arenzano. ‘We’ve been working in this resort area for ten years,’ says Nespoli.‘It is a unique gated holiday community envisioned by architects such as Magistretti, Ponti, Zanuso, Gardella and Dominioni, who designed several houses there. It was a utopian project born from the desire of Milan’s cultural elite of the time to create a retreat of their own. We are very grateful to be contributing to this architectural legacy. My generation is now rediscovering the houses our ancestors built. Some of them have been vacant for many years, so there is work on them that must be done.’
This was also the case with Casa Arosio, a holiday home designed by Magistretti for the engineer Paolo Arosio, a good friend and collaborator. Built between 1956-1959, the house is a manifesto of modernist Mediterranean culture. It is a synthesis of progressive architectural thinking mixed with local culture and lifestyle. Its crisp, geometric form echoes traditional Mediterranean houses, which typically featured the clean white walls admired by many modernists, from Le Corbusier to Gio Ponti. This vernacular architecture influenced Casa Arosio’s stacked, rectangular volumes, nodding to the area’s typical seaside structures. For these qualities, Casa Arosio exemplifies how postwar Italian architects started to move away from the strict rationalist architecture of the first half of the century, in favour of historical continuity and a more contextual approach.
For the project, Magistretti collaborated with landscape architect Elena Balsari Berrone to craft various pathways and connections within the sloping terrain through a series of rooftop gardens. The intricate plan brings together indoors and outdoors, while the exterior walls were treated with a special surface material that incorporates small pieces of crushed glass to better reflect the light.
The equally complex interiors are based on a playful split-level scheme with many curved features, integrating different levels for compact and cosy holiday living. Magistretti applied Adolf Loos’ famous Raumplan approach to the design (which involves planning a spatial composition around three-dimensional volumes rather than traditional horizontal floor plans). Arosio and his family regularly enjoyed the house until the 1970s, when Pineta started becoming busier and more commercial. After that, together with friends, they moved their holiday life to Sardinia, where Magistretti designed two more houses for them, and Casa Arosio changed hands.
‘When we first got inside the house, it was clear that it had not been lived in for many years. It was also in bad shape structurally,’ says Nespoli. ‘We had to rebuild almost everything, but we did it with huge respect to the original genius loci. We had to include new insulation and update the heating system, which was very innovative for its time.’ They also added a lift, and tweaked the layout. ‘We kept the main areas and ingredients, but we had to change the rooms originally dedicated to staff, for instance – these became part of the main living space,’ adds Nespoli.
Eligo Studio worked closely with Fondazione Vico Magistretti, which provided Casa Arosio’s original plans and details, and helped the designers understand Magistretti’s thinking and personality. ‘Everything in the project has a connection to Magistretti. For example, we used Mutina tiles by Konstantin Grcic, who was one of his students at the Royal College of Art in London,’ says Nespoli. ‘At the end of the 1950s, Magistretti was more into architecture and artisanal design than industrial design.
His philosophy was very pragmatic. He designed spaces, but his work was also about how the owner inhabited them. It has a lot in common with our approach.’ With Casa Arosio, Eligo Studio not only transformed a 1950s home to its new owners’ 21st-century requirements; they also safeguarded Magistretti’s original intention, and through this, saved a valuable piece of Italian modernist history.