let me preface this post by saying: imagine having plants covering your entire house. well, this is not a house – but a disused garage turned pavilion. but still! called the Green Box, it was renovated by italian architects ACT Romegialli. it’s a small building on the property of a vacation house in the Rhaetian Alps, and serves the owner as “a room for the gardening tools, an area for cooking and a space for conviviality.”
A structure made with lightweight metal galvanised profiles and steel wires wraps the existing building and transforms it into a support for the climbing vegetation. It is composed mainly by deciduous vegetation: honeysuckle and Russian vine for the main texture, on which climbs up the secondary texture of hop and golden tiara. On the basement there are groups of herbaceous perennials (red valerian, Lindheimer’s beeblossom, bloody geranium, browneyed Susan), alternating with annual ones (cosmos, golden marigold, nasturtium, zinnia) to ensure a light but continuos flowering.
Materials are left rough and simple; galvanized steel for the kitchen, larch planks for flooring and big sliding doors, windows in unpainted galvanised steel and simple pipes for the water supply. This small green shelter is a privileged observation point of the changing of the seasons of the surrounding garden – which is left wild in some areas, and in others transformed into a garden of flowers or simple green spaces, and punctuated only by beautiful nude rocks scattered throughout the property.
architecture by ACT Romegialli. landscaping by Gheo Clavarino Bianchi. photos by Marcello Mariana.