Nested in a fertile valley of Scopello, Sicily, Casa Storta sits on a small hill and faces out towards the sea. The project foresees the re-use of a tilted building structure whose inclination produces a strange yet exciting feeling of disorientation. The existing structure, a concrete frame with walls filled with local tuff stone from volcanic material, tilted more than two meters after a heavy rainfall, sloping towards one corner—which gave the project its name. After this incident, the former owners decided not to invest further in the house and left it in this state. During several years of abandonment, the legislative condition was changed and any construction on the site has been prohibited since then. When the house was purchased, a new, horizontal surface of translucent fabric was inserted to better understand the effect of living in a sloped house. This intervention became the departure point for imagining a house with two kinds of levels: one that is parallel with the visible horizon, and another one, that is the original, sloping floor.
The existing window openings further this sense of disorientation, offering an opportunity for the surrounding landscape to visually enter the interior. The decision to keep the original slanted surface refers to Claude Parent’s and Paul Virilio’s idea for the fonction oblique. In their proposal, which serves as a model for a new kind of living, all surfaces are inclined to engage the human body, turning the house into a single undulating landscape of continuous spaces. In this sense, all of the house’s furniture and functions should be part of a unified surface. Following this approach, functions such as the toilet, bathtub, kitchen, and seating are indented into the floor slab, creating one single landscape for living.