Casa della Sughera

Set on a steep slope facing the sea and the island of Tavolara, Casa della Sughera (The Cork Oak House) appears as a composition of white volumes rising from a granite base and unfolding across two levels between the hillside and the waterfront. At its center, a new void cuts through the building, connecting the terrace, the pool, the living area, and the area marked by the presence of a large cork oak. This void is the element that makes the transformation legible: an intervention that reorganizes the house and redefines its relationship with the landscape.

Casa della Sughera is a renovation designed by gosplan on a 1970s structure, in a context shaped by the organic language that the Genoa‑based practice recognizes in the work of architects such as Luigi Vietti, Alberto Ponis, Michele and Giancarlo Busiri‑Vici, and Jacques and Savin Couëlle — authors of many significant buildings along this coastline. The project preserves the two original wings and introduces, on the upper level, a new central volume that recomposes the architectural organism, improves exposure, and establishes a system of paths linking the hillside level to the sea. The landscape design, by caarpa, intervenes on the outdoor spaces and on the connections between the different elevations of the site.

The house unfolds across two levels partially embedded in the terrain and topped by a white, sculptural terrace from which chimneys emerge, their geometry echoing the profile of Tavolara. The two floors differ in materiality and in their relationship with the exterior. The upper level, finished with a rough white plaster, engages with light and with the terrace. At the rear, liriope and periwinkle flank the entrance stair with soft cushions of planting in the dappled shade cast by phillyrea and oleanders. The lower level, clad in local granite and marked by uneven arches, integrates with the retaining walls and the pool area. The central void is the fulcrum of the project — a large, traversable space that connects the two original wings and becomes the new center of gravity of the house. This subtraction expands the living area, opens views toward the south and the hillside behind, improves natural ventilation, and multiplies visual connections toward the sea and Tavolara.

At the rear, the cork oak becomes the reference point for a small, enclosed garden — the “cork‑oak room” — around which a path unfolds, taking advantage of the site’s changes in elevation. Prostrate rosemary and tulbaghia emerge among the monoliths, establishing a dialogue with the new stone wall and the surrounding landscape. A curved stair wraps this space, linking the roof terrace to the garden. On the seaward side, the connection between the two levels is entrusted to a projecting balcony topped by a timber structure that extends beyond the perimeter of the building, forming an overhang reminiscent of Frank Lloyd Wright’s forms. More than a service element, it extends the living area outward and introduces a material language distinct from that of the house. Its articulation not only connects the two levels, mediating between the granite masonry and the plastered surfaces, but also constructs a threshold between interior and exterior, filtering light and opening framed views that reorganize the perception of the entire waterfront façade.

The continuity between interior and exterior is expressed through the basalt flooring, laid in an irregular tessellation akin to a Voronoi geometry. The same pattern lines the pool, establishing a direct relationship between the domestic spaces and the water. The design is not ornamental: it extends the living area beyond the walls and defines a unified field that dissolves the boundary between inside and outside. Oak is used for the custom furniture, window frames, and pergolas, recalling the original beams of the pitched roofs, while terracotta tiles in the sleeping area introduce a warmer material note.

Casa della Sughera marks a new step in gosplan’s research, which operates through hybridization rather than separation: between furniture and architecture, between structure and object, between elements that recode space rather than represent it. This project does not simply restore an existing building; it redefines its relationship with the context, reinterpreting the vocabulary of the architects who shaped the built landscape of Sardinia in the 1970s. The central space — void, traversable, relational — synthesizes this stance: a device that sets functions, views, and materials in tension, revealing the capacity of architecture to interrupt the normality of built space and open it to new possibilities. In this sense, Casa della Sughera is not merely a renovation, but a critical operation that renews a historical lexicon and brings it into dialogue with a way of designing grounded in measure, continuity, and landscape awareness.