The manifesto home

Her manifesto home dates from the early 70s. This was the family home in Piazzale Belle Arti, Rome. Here, at the top of the building designed by Giulio and Enrico Gra, Marta Lonzi developed a spatial device that she would adopt again in many subsequent buildings: wood and glass partitions, often curved to the limit of their structural possibilities, to create visually permeable spaces, areas of relative privacy, without breaking the flow of relationships and life.

“The insertion of the glazing, suggested by the need to divide only the noise and the smells of the kitchen dining-room from the living room, was an act developed by my perception, with the work of Gra, as I myself guided the discovery, to consider it, at the time a gesture, what I expected... The signs that define the plan are opposed by the signs that define the facades: to the south, towards the historic city, the sun and the sea breeze, the facade expands in a succession of arches almost like an aqueduct rising above the city... To the north, towards the countryside... and the cold winds of sunset, the facade contracts and is thicker, with the central part containing a portico with three deep arches” (ML 1989).

“My studio is attached to my house, a house that I have designed myself. Very often the people who come to my studio know the spaces in which I live and receive a guarantee from me: the houses I design are houses in which I would live” (ML 1984)