Tredici house

The new straw-bale insulated level added to this existing residential building on Lago Maggiore hosts three bedrooms and bathrooms for a family of five. Prefab timber-framed, straw-bale insulated walls allowed to optimize construction site logistics and duration.

As part of the renovation of a 1970s residential building, located in Arona, on the southern tip of Lago Maggiore, ing. Roberta Tredici, designer and owner of this house, decided to add another level, demolishing the existing concrete roof, to host the bedrooms of her family of five.

In order to optimize the site construction logistics, the decision was to create pre-assembled, timber-framed, external straw-bale insulated walls. It is the first Italian project with these features. In these walls the vertical struts act as the pillars of the structure, while the upper horizontal elements are the beams that support the roof. Horizontal and vertical struts of the walls are fixed-connected, so that the walls also behave as the wind bracing system of the whole attic. Internal plastering of the attic is done with clay mortar, added with different natural pigments that define each room. The same plasters have been used on the first floor, even applied on the more conventional materials like reinforced concrete and bricks.

Thanks to both the insulation and the mechanical solutions, the building is classified as a Near Zero Energy Building (NZEB).

Under previous employment at Cming, Francesco Verzura worked on the structural design and analysis, building engineering and detailing.

Architect
Roberta Tredici

Structural engineering
Cming

Contractor
Casalogica