On a steep hillside above Lago Maggiore, Pedro&Juana transform the ruin of a rural stable into two compact houses that preserve the original perimeter while expanding within the allowable 20 percent. Salvaged stone, slate roofs, and thick concrete frames structure a clear dialogue between agricultural memory and contemporary domestic life, with the split massing, oriented gables, and calibrated apertures choreographing movement, light, and views across the landscape.
Le Stalle Technical Information
- Architects: Pedro&Juana
- Location: Tronzano, Lago Maggiore, Italy
- Gross Area: 206 m2 | 2,217 Sq. Ft.
- Project Years: 2024
- Photographs: © Studio Campo
How can we teach ancient stones to speak our contemporary language?
– Pedro&Juana
Heritage Constraints as Design Driver
Italian preservation rules fixed the project’s footprint while permitting a modest 20 percent enlargement. Rather than overwrite the ruin, the architects recast the stable’s rectangular mass as two adjacent volumes separated by a narrow slot. The incision clarifies the presence of two dwellings, relieves the heft of the stone envelope, and introduces a calibrated pause in the plan that registers as sky and light.
Accessed by a Roman cobblestone road, the site’s isolation and agricultural past shaped the project’s tectonics. Building directly on the ruin’s perimeter maintains the spatial grain of the original farm structure, allowing contemporary habitation to inhabit a known outline. Roof orientations respond to topography and long views, with the rear gable subtly skewed to catch the lake below. At the same time, the paired silhouettes retain the legible simplicity of rural Lombard forms.
Reconstituted Masonry and Roof Articulation
The new load-bearing walls are rebuilt from stones salvaged on site, preserving chromatic variety and granular texture while avoiding the use of imported materials. The course reads as a careful recomposition rather than an imitation, acknowledging loss and repair in the wall’s surface. Deep reveals and a continuous stone datum give the envelope mass and scale, allowing interiors to benefit from the thermal inertia of the masonry.
Slate gabled roofs with thick eaves reinforce the stature of the volumes and address the climate. The deep overhangs protect the rebuilt stone from rain and high summer sun, while differing pitches temper the perceived bulk and align with view corridors. Expressed elements consolidate the facade’s order: paired Corten downpipes run a measured vertical alongside a shallow horizontal indent in the granite, producing a legible service line and a shadow course that lightens the wall above.
Apertures as Landscape Instruments
Thick concrete frames pierce the stone envelope to capture specific scenes in the landscape. One aligns with a distant bell tower on the ridge, another with the forest edge, establishing precise relationships that exceed generic glazing. The mass of the frames admits controlled daylight and establishes deep embrasures that act as spatial devices rather than surface perforations.
Inside, the alignment of openings choreographs a sequence from dining to bedroom to kitchen, culminating at the terrace where the view opens to the Alps. These framed scenes behave like moving paintings, shifting as one walks and as the weather changes. The juxtaposition of rough stone and crisp concrete articulates temporal layers, allowing the historic fabric to converse with a contemporary spatial language without dissolving into one another.
Terraced Circulation and Interior Atmosphere
The hillside yields two-level organizations for both houses. The central split accommodates a stair that links a planted terrace to the upper entry of Casa B, forming a shared yet distinct threshold between units. This exterior passage registers the site’s gradient in everyday circulation and gives each dwelling a controlled interface with the landscape.
Compact footprints concentrate program and services, using sectional shifts to maintain privacy across the pair. Differentiated color palettes set apart the interiors of Casa A and Casa B, while floor-to-ceiling tiling creates immersive wet rooms that read as crafted insertions within the stone shell. The lush garden counters the rocky envelope, extending the notion of shelter across indoors and out and balancing the project’s material gravity with seasonal growth and scent.
About Pedro&Juana
Pedro&Juana is a Mexico City-based architecture studio founded in 2011 by Mecky Reuss and Ana Paula Ruiz Galindo. The studio is known for its experimental and context-sensitive approach that combines architectural history, material reuse, and vibrant atmospheres. Their projects often explore the dialogue between the contemporary and the historical, creating layered spatial narratives that engage with site, climate, and human experience.
Credits and Additional Notes
- Client: Private Client
- Construction company: Studio Catenazzi
- Other contributors: Livia Arroyo, Adriana Carlos, Diego Manzano, Rosario Madrazo, Mariel Kuri
- Photography: Gaia Cambiaggi, Anna Positano | Studio Campo; Andreas Reuss, when stated.
