Villa Umbra

The villa occupies four terraces cut into the hillside above Torno, each one a single room deep so that no space in the house faces away from the water. The approach is deliberately blind: a gravel court, a stone wall, a door. Everything is held back until the last five metres.

Light as structure

Baragli treated the glazing as the load-bearing decision. The lake elevation carries no columns across sixteen metres, which means that after dark the house reads from the water as four horizontal bands of warm light with nothing visible holding them apart.

The lower terrace holds the pool, a summer kitchen and a guest annexe with its own entrance from the lane. The boathouse and mooring are included and currently let to a neighbour on a rolling annual agreement.