Contemporary Living: Three Residences by And Studio Architects
For And Studio Architects, residential design always stems from the relationship between architecture, place, and lifestyle. Each project begins with different conditions—the landscape, an existing building, a productive past—but shares the same goal: to create spaces capable of offering quality, comfort, and identity, avoiding standardized solutions.
The Le Querce Residences, in the Casciana Terme Lari area, interpret the theme of living in the Tuscan landscape. Twelve residential units nestle among hills, vineyards, and olive groves, featuring restrained volumes, gardens, loggias, and terraces. The project draws on Italian architecture from the 1960s and 1970s and the influence of Renzo Bellucci, reinterpreting their rigor and attention to materials with a contemporary twist. Brick, plaster, concrete, and wood create surfaces that react to light and strengthen the relationship between domestic space and landscape.
In Santa Maria a Monte, Residenza Belpoggio addresses the theme of revitalizing the existing building. Six apartments, varying in size and configuration, breathe new life into a building through a design focused on brightness, functionality, and comfort. Terraces, gardens, courtyards, and panoramic views expand the home's scale, while pathways, parking, and common areas are integrated into a unified design. Revitalization thus becomes an opportunity to restore value to the built heritage and adapt it to new ways of living.
The project for the former Ceccanti Foundries in Valicelle, on the other hand, draws on industrial heritage. The abandoned production area is transformed into a residential complex inspired by the contemporary loft style, divided into three typologies with pitched, gabled, and vaulted roofs. Brick becomes the underlying theme of the project, complemented by light-colored plaster, metal structures, and large glass surfaces. Inside, double-height ceilings, exposed beams, and brick vaults maintain the site's industrial character, translating it into a new domestic dimension.
Three distinct projects thus express a single idea of living: an architecture capable of interpreting what already exists—landscape, memory, matter—and transforming it into a new experience of space. For And Studio Architects, a residence is not simply a building, but a system of relationships between interior and exterior, light and matter, memory and contemporaneity.
