Ugo Luccichenti's Trionfale Villa in Rome 1953-1959

The "villino", planned in the northern Rome among 1953 and 1959, is a singular building. It can be shortly described as a volume cutted horizontally by an open air floor that generate two solids connected by a couple of stairs that, in a "constructivist" act, climb the sky to form a wide terrace -with a great view on Rome- whose function is connected to only one flat. Luccichenti, thanks to this actions (the cut, the stairs, the terrace), is able to superimpose two autonomous blocks in one only building. This typological hybridization between palace and villa in one building make complete an experiment that many architects, even nowadays, are not able to lead. This sophisticated compositive mechanism is in its sharp "lecture": the path that leads from the first idea to the final construction of the "villino Trionfale" keeps more than 5 years. If 5 years seems a short time to a contemporary Italian architect, it was a very long period in the fifties, that I like to attribute to the deep theory work by Luccichenti.