Villa La Saracena

A clear desire to create an experience more than just a summer residence

The Villa, begun in 1955 and completed in 1957, was designed by the architect Luigi Moretti, also author of the Casa delle Armi at the Foro Italico, the Palazzina del Girasole in Rome, the Watergate complex in Washington DC and the Stock Exchange Tower in Montreal.
In the architect's professional biography, the building is placed in a phase of linguistic renewal, declining a new syntax that, although strongly linked to the use of the reinforced concrete construction technique, allows the adoption of free plans, freeing the structure from the infill and the adoption of overhangs of considerable size.

It is thus influenced by an autonomous design logic aimed at the production of “forms”.
In the case of Villa La Saracena, all this applies to the theme of the single-family villa. The building's layout draws inspiration from the irregularity of the lot and the variation in axis of the 2 opposite fronts, the one towards the city and the one towards the sea, winding along the path that connects them. The result is an architectural solution that integrates the building and the external spaces. Thus the villa experiences 2 different perspective realities.
Towards the land, there is the “tower” of the staircase with “slit” windows; the entrance, protected by the projecting circular canopy, which is accessed from the garden through a narrow passage cut into the curved enclosure wall. Towards the sea, instead, the tower opens through the large windows of the bedrooms and the long “promenade” lounge, ending with a canopy that recalls the masts of a sailboat and that invites the view of the horizon between the sky and the sea.

The planimetric articulation, which brings the building back to the typology of the open courtyard villa, offers a specific design version for each function, which is also reflected in the elevation, where volumetric continuity is denied and each part has its own particular definition, obeying the intent to give an autonomous formal response to each single function or element, both inside and outside.
The Villa was placed under monumental constraint in 2010 by the Ministry of Cultural Heritage, because it was declared to be of particularly important interest.
Source: http://www.retedimorestorichelazio.it