In the sun-washed southern expanse where Casa SO by DIIR quietly rises, openness is not merely an architectural intention—it’s a philosophy, lived and built.
This latest residential project takes the familiar notion of the family home and stretches it toward something richer: an adaptable domestic infrastructure that’s at once graceful and gently radical.
At the heart of the design lies a typological investigation—an evolution, not a reinvention. Casa SO doesn’t attempt to rewrite architectural history, but instead borrows knowingly from its predecessors, offering a distillation of ideas that find their most complete expression here. The result is a home that plays with spatial hierarchy like a well-worn game board: each move—each room—strategically conceived, yet open to reinterpretation. The spaces are connected, yes, but also capable of striking out on their own, should solitude or purpose call.
This fluidity, paradoxically, demands a certain severity in layout. Here, clarity is queen. The plan divides the home into three long programmatic bands—equal in dimension, unequal in ambition. It’s within these conceptual ribbons that the home begins to reveal itself. These bands will, over time, be “colonized,” to use the architects' term, by activity and life, a slow-motion unfolding of function and form.
Key to the spatial choreography are the dividing walls—not merely partitions, but operative elements. These are thickened, inhabited boundaries that contain closets, storage, and the occasional passage. Perforated and porous, they frame sightlines and offer curated glimpses through the home. One can imagine standing in the living room and catching, through a narrow aperture, the outline of a figure in the kitchen—never alone, never fully together.
At either end of these bands, generous openings forge connections to the outdoors. The architecture refuses the notion of the sealed box; light and air are invited in with abandon. The central band, curiously, is devoted to what one might call the server spaces: those quiet workhorses of domesticity. By anchoring these in the center, the design liberates the periphery—letting life happen around rather than through them. It’s an idea replicated across all floors, a spatial refrain played with increasing resonance.
Materially, Casa SO strikes a Mediterranean chord—if not overtly, then in temperament. A palette of ochres and neutrals lends warmth without nostalgia, restraint without coldness. Brick, that most humble and storied of materials, runs like a leitmotif through the project. Here, it’s not just structure—it’s narrative. Its rough honesty plays against the smooth grain of oak and the quiet elegance of travertine, offering a tactile counterpoint that grounds the home in its place.
And then there’s the staircase: a sculptural interjection of stainless steel that coils through the entry hall like a note of punctuation. It is functional, of course, but also ceremonial—a moment of arrival, of ascent, of pause.
