Casa Silca / Forni & Gueli Architetti

Architects: Forni & Gueli Architetti
Year: 2020–2024
Photography: Marcello Mariana
Location: Gordola
Country: Switzerland

Casa Silca transforms a group of existing rural structures in the historic core of Gordola into a contemporary residential composition while retaining the character of the site. The project recovers an old barn and a rustic building, reorganizing the property around three apartments, an underground garage, and a substantial garden with vegetable plots and fruit trees. Its architectural language is deliberately restrained, using a limited palette of materials to establish continuity between the different spaces. Ceramic flooring defines the living areas, while oak parquet introduces a warmer, more intimate atmosphere to the bedrooms. A defining element of the intervention is its reinterpretation of the perforated masonry traditionally found in local barns. Small openings formed through alternating solid bricks create a textured facade that limits views into the private courtyard while maintaining ventilation. Through this relationship between preservation and reinterpretation, Casa Silca establishes a contemporary identity rooted in the architectural traditions of Ticino.

Casa Silca occupies a compact setting within Gordola’s historic core, where the surrounding architecture reflects a strong regional identity through its forms and material expression. Forni & Gueli Architetti Sagl approached the project as more than the rehabilitation of individual structures, using the intervention to establish a renewed architectural order across the property. The original brief called for the recovery of an old barn and a rustic building for residential use, creating an opportunity to reconcile the site’s existing rural character with contemporary domestic requirements.

The reorganization introduces three apartments within the volumes, accompanied by a newly constructed underground garage and a generous outdoor setting. A garden, vegetable plot, and fruit trees extend the residential program beyond the buildings, retaining a connection to the productive landscape traditionally associated with rural properties in the area. Rather than separating the restored structures from their surroundings, the project treats the buildings and open spaces as components of a unified composition, allowing the historic fabric to remain present while giving the property a clearer contemporary identity.

Privacy toward the green courtyard became a determining factor in the architectural treatment of the facades. The client sought to minimize openings facing the garden, prompting the architects to look toward the traditional barns and farmhouses of the surrounding area for a suitable response. Historic barn facades frequently incorporated small, square openings created through the alternating placement of solid bricks within masonry walls. Originally intended to provide ventilation for livestock areas, this construction principle offered a precedent for developing a contemporary screen that could address both privacy and airflow.

At Casa Silca, the traditional barn opening is transformed into a graphic masonry texture that mediates between enclosure and permeability. The patterned wall limits direct views into the private areas while allowing air to circulate through the interior, producing a carefully controlled relationship between solid and void. The repetition of the openings also gives the facade depth and rhythm, making the wall an architectural feature in its own right. Rather than reproducing a historic detail literally, the project extracts its functional logic and adapts it to the conditions of contemporary residential life.

A similarly controlled approach defines the interiors, where a deliberately limited material palette reinforces the reading of the volumes and spaces. Ceramic flooring characterizes the living areas, while oak parquet establishes a warmer and more intimate atmosphere within the sleeping areas. This restrained material strategy allows changes in texture and character to correspond with the organization of the domestic spaces without introducing unnecessary visual complexity. Together with the garden, recovered structures, and perforated masonry, the interiors complete an intervention that connects contemporary habitation with the architectural memory of Gordola. Casa Silca ultimately demonstrates how rural heritage can be renewed through selective transformation, allowing existing forms and construction traditions to inform a distinct contemporary architectural language.