La Saracena Villa

Luigi Moretti – Villa called “La Saracena” Santa Marinella – Rome Italy, 1954

The Villa, which began in 1955 and ended in 1957, was designed by the architect Luigi Moretti, also author of the House of Arms at the Foro Italico, of the Girasole building in Rome, of the Watergate complex in Washington D.C. and the Montreal Stock Exchange Tower.
In the architect's professional biography, the building is in a phase of linguistic renewal, declining a new syntax which, although strongly linked to the use of the construction technique of reinforced concrete, allows the adoption of free plants, freeing the structure from the infill and the adoption of large overhangs.

Thus affected by an autonomous design logic addressed to the production of "forms".
In the case of Villa La Saracena, all of this applies to the theme of the detached villa. The layout of the building is inspired by the irregularity of the lot and by the variation of the axis of the 2 opposite fronts, the one towards the city and the one towards the sea, winding along the path that connects them. The result is an architectural solution that integrates the building and the external spaces. Thus the villa lives 2 different perspective realities.
To the ground, there is the "tower" of the staircase with "slits" windows; the entrance, protected by the overhanging circular canopy, which is accessed from the garden through a narrow passage cut into the curved fence wall. Towards the sea, however, the tower opens through the large windows of the bedrooms and the long "promenade" lounge, ending with a canopy that recalls the masts of a sailing boat and which invites to the view of the horizon between sky and sea.
The planimetric articulation, which leads the building back to the type of villa with an open courtyard, offers a specific design version for each function, which is also reflected in elevation, where volumetric continuity is denied and each part has its own particular definition, obeying with the intention of giving an independent formal response to every single function or element, both inside and outside.
The Villa was subjected to a monumental restriction in 2010 by the Ministry of Cultural Heritage, because it was declared of particularly important interest.