Villa in Chianti

A stately villa at Greti, in Chianti, renovated and extended over two years. The house already had its garden, its cypresses, its forecourt and its pool; the work was to make it habitable again without arguing with any of that.

Two kitchens came out of it. One inside the house, added to in the original style — container modules, a stoneware worktop, a brass island made to measure. The other in the old barn below, gutted and rebuilt in corten, reclaimed timber and galvanized iron as a kitchen you could spend the day in. Two bathrooms upstairs were knocked into one and divided again by a wall of galvanized iron and antiqued mirror, lined inside with Italian cypress. Outside, the furniture was kept low and quiet so that nothing competed with the valley, and a round corten table was designed to open out around a tree that was already standing there.