yakisugi
house
sorisole (bg)2022
At the foot of the Bergamo hills, a single-family house reinterprets the relationship between built form and nature, choosing to relate — in its morphology, materials, and colours — not to the heterogeneous residential fabric that surrounds it, but to the green landscape in which it is immersed.
- © Andrea Ceriani
- © Andrea Ceriani
- © Andrea Ceriani
- © Andrea Ceriani
- © Andrea Ceriani
© Andrea Ceriani
The garden and the mountain scenery guide both form and function, restoring to architecture its role as a living component of the landscape and treating greenery not as a backdrop, but as an essential space of life.
© Andrea Ceriani
The project finds its expressive language in the Japanese technique of shou sugi ban — a radical yet poetic gesture in which fire, used to protect the wood, reveals its inner essence. The larch becomes a dark, vibrant skin, resistant to weather and time, its charred surface evoking the texture of tree bark and allowing the building to blend seamlessly into the wooded surroundings.
© Andrea Ceriani
A fair-faced concrete base, conceived as a backdrop for climbing vegetation, anchors the house to the ground and houses the service areas, while above, a compact and lightweight timber volume opens to the light. The construction system — dry assembly with prefabricated wooden modules — is not only a technical choice but a cultural one: reducing the impact of the building process, ensuring sustainability, and bringing the house closer to the natural cycle of the landscape it inhabits.
© Andrea Ceriani
Inside, pale birch wood envelops walls, ceilings, and furnishings, diffusing a soft, warm light that contrasts with the dark exterior shell. If outside the house resembles a charred trunk, inside it reveals a luminous, welcoming heart, protected by its own bark.
© Andrea Ceriani
Permeable paths, gravel, and timber inserts trace the daily movements without interrupting the continuity of the greenery, while a garden of low-maintenance species and scattered trees creates natural screens and carefully designed visual corridors.




