They are overtly contemporary in style - as though an act of revenge, a counterattack, or a kind of theatrical drawl. Designed by Laura Rocca, Roccatelier Associati, Milano, the Villa project, located in Monza, Italy, dates back to1994. To be precise, it consists of five row-houses, despite the fact that their particular definition goes beyond the formal limits imposed by the typology.The project plan varies between 45° and 90° angles and maintains these over other, more subtle, inclinations. The form is the result of a slalom run between the lot's geometry and the urban planning regulations. Were it not for the scantiness of the lot size, it might be defined as a giant slalom. The lot is barely thirteen meters wide, give or take one meter, minus the six meters required distancing from the adjacent lot. Thus the building fluctuates between the mean of five and seven meters with inclined walls, overhangs, and by making only what is truly necessary and complicating it when necessary.

The doors at the raised entries are painted green, red, and yellow. The stairs located at these entries are all in metal. Some are spiral, others not, and each is different. They vertically connect the floor levels and the houses' functions by running up light-wells. They end in lofts whose structure is composed of a large, three-meter-high reticular steel truss that runs the full length of the building at an inclination and serves for special transport. The stairs tend to move away from the walls. When, however, they do run along them, the walls are made of glass to assure a spatial flow that, from certain points of view, becomes vertiginous.

The lofts define spaces that do not rigidly serve a specific function. They are a supplement, an added value - now play space, later a bedroom, a study,or a room with a grand view - to satisfy each family's needs. The blue steel of the truss crosses the various dwelling units by slipping through the white plaster of one property and re-emerging out of the white into the next. Looking at it all from the inside, the project is one of penetration and juxtaposition, in which each subsystem seems to follow its own path or interrupt itself so as not to interfere in the continuity of another. At times, the slabs between the floor levels are drawn back from the exterior cladding so the surface may become continuous glazing and thus augment the light penetrating into the two-storied façades. In like fashion, the flooring applied in the main spaces does not end at the door jambs but overlaps into bathrooms and laundry rooms with their parquet set at 45°.

On the top floors, there is access to a roof-garden through doors with oval portholes - over which one would expect a mirror and padding like the well-known example in Mollino's Casa D'Errico. The roof-garden looks like a ship's deck. It seems to unwind, continuously dribbling forth outgrowths and the small towers of smoke stacks. The colors are primary: red, yellow, blue, and green. They are structural and without compromise: a blue is a blue, a red is a red, and so forth. For the rest, the colors are those of the materials: exposed concrete, copper/zinc/titanium sheet metal and stainless steel.

Visit Roccatelier Associati for more information.