The project, conducted by AMAA, involves the restoration of a Venetian barchessa located in a private courtyard in Lonigo historic center, and its conversion into a collectible design gallery.

AMAA is a collaborative architecture studio based in Venice. You can visit other AMAA’s projects on New Generations, such as Space Within a Space and Final Outcome.

The tension between old and new finds its realisation in the pleonastic stair, an object seemingly suspended in balance within the space.

What is pleonastic is not strictly necessary.

The stair wasn’t necessary in the first place; neither would be the supporting strut. The invention that the stair brings about is its independence from the slab and the walls. That’s how the stair from being pleonastic becomes fantastic.

The self-supporting stair does not interfere with the beauty and the fragility of the wooden slab and the load-bearing walls.

Like an Escherian connective element between two worlds, the stair is once a rising pathway, once a scenographic background.

It is at once embraced by the space and becomes part of it, as well as an intrusive addition where the tension between old and new originates.

The stair rises out of the new concrete ground, which, along its perimeter, reveals a 3 cm interstice from the walls to embrace the natural crumbling of the inner walls’ surfaces.

The building is characterised by thick stone walls and by a timber roof truss, timber beams, and clay tiles.

The meticulous restoration involved the careful search and the recovery of salvaged materials from other similar local sites to integrate the original roof.

The handcrafted rusty steel window fixtures, along with the restoration of the original wooden floor, complete the conservation project.

In order to be radical, a project does not necessarily have to aim for utopic or large-scale works. A small action in its pragmatic core may transform a space.