I never thought of this house as something to be rewritten,’ says Gabriele Fanuli of his home in Salento. ‘Rather, it was a structure to be listened to. The architecture already existed: arches, vaults, beautiful proportions. My work was mainly about removing, lightening and leaving space.’
The landscape architect discovered that the process of designing a house and a garden share many similarities, involving calibrating solids and voids, thinking about growth and accepting transformation. ‘The climate of Copertino and the light of Salento literally enter the spaces, and I simply tried not to hinder them,’ he says.
Measuring 100 square metres, this is a house that is experienced as a continuum, with spaces following on from one another as they do in a landscape. Variations in the material palette, rather than walls, suggest the shift between rooms.
Gabriele’s considered use of plants is crucial to the scheme; far from being a purely decorative element, they serve as a living structure that alters the perception of space, introducing verticality and creating relationships between the height of the vaults and the domestic scale.
With all this greenery, the boundary between inside and outside also becomes a permeable threshold. Colour, meanwhile, appears in accents, creating subtle tensions within the neutral palette and interrupting the calm without disturbing it. The furnishings, too, do not adhere to a single style. Contemporary elements co-exist with reclaimed objects.
Affinities with 1960s and 1970s design emerge – soft forms and a certain playful freedom – but not as a nostalgic reference. ‘It’s the kind of design that doesn’t take itself too seriously,’ notes Gabriele. ‘Bringing it into a rural Puglian context felt natural: after all, this is also a place that’s not rigid, but very instinctive.’
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The most important details for Gabriele are not those that immediately catch the eye, but the voids and transitional moments. ‘I’m drawn to spaces that seem to serve no purpose,’ he reflects. ‘They make everything else lighter.’ As in a garden, nothing is final: everything grows, transforms, rebalances.
His home is not a manifesto, but a quiet stance on design as an act of respect and durability. It is also the location for RinVaso Design (@rin_vaso) – his passion project dedicated to the recovery of discarded pots and plants, for which Gabriele finds homes in new gardens. ‘It’s about second chances,’ he explains. ‘And this house, in a way, is following the same path.’
