Villa outside the city, Perugia
Perugia: panoramic terraces and living slopes in the heart of Umbria.
In the heart of the Umbrian hills, we faced a slope sliding steeply down to the valley, almost inaccessible. To make it welcoming, we had to reshape the earth decisively, yet always with deep respect for the place.
Our desire was to create three large terraces, spaces of quiet carved into the slope, transforming a dizzying descent into a harmonic sequence of gardens to be lived in.
It was a work of great care, necessary to restore habitability and sweetness to what was previously just a rugged passage.
We did not want to wound the landscape with concrete walls. We chose a gentler path. The new planes—the house, the pool, the service area—dialogue with each other through large green slopes.
On the flat parts, we laid Zoysia ‘Innovation’, a soft and sustainable carpet that asks for little water and invites walking barefoot.
But the project’s real strength lies not in the built environment: it is in the earth itself, modeled and sustained by roots, in a subtle balance where technique hides to leave space for nature.
The slopes are the garden’s pulsating soul. In the first one, we entrusted the task to time: colorful perennials offer immediate emotion, protecting the slow growth of shrubs that, year after year, will grant structure and volume.
It is a landscape that knows how to wait. The second slope, further down, dresses in the simplicity of ornamental grasses: golden waves consolidating the hillside.
All around, mixed hedges embrace the garden echoing the same species, a green frame gathering the gaze and granting a sense of intimate protection.
The result is a place where gravity becomes light. The pool does not seem suspended in the void but welcomed by the earth, protected by vegetation wrapping every level change.
We wanted to demonstrate that plants can replace concrete, guaranteeing safety and gifting, instead of grey, a living and mutable landscape.
Green architecture, where functional necessity delicately fades into the poetry of the wind caressing flowers and leaves.
