+ Villa gallo

The villa Gallo, designed by Kurt Külby in the early 1960ies, is a modernist house. The unobtrusive formal language of the building is pragmatic and simple. Only the copper-cladded edges of the cantilevered roof and the fine materiality of the façade that is cladded with white marble tiles show that this is an elegant, comfortable and, in its time, ambitioned single family house.

The relation to nature, in this case flora and topography, is an important aspect of the design. Here it is executed in a modernist way, through formal contrast while integrating by means of transparency, view and materiality: Two intersecting rectangular volumes follow the steep slope of the site, leading to an internal split-level organization around a central open staircase. The relatively open-plan cooking, eating and living areas with wide views and general openings also host a big sunken flower pot. There is a grotto-like exterior seating area behind the chimney, that allows access to the garden and ultimately to the big roof terrasse.

The careful and high-quality execution of the project has secured its almost unchanged appearance 60 years after construction. The growing vegetation around the building further enhances the primacy of Nature, where humans build, through technical means, only what is necessary for their comfortable wellbeing.