A slender truss bridge crosses from the steep hillside out to meet the residence block massing. Images Available on The GBC CD-ROM . Contributions appreciated Drawings Available on The GBC CD-ROM . The house itself consists of a cubic tower frame with heavy corner pillars built of oversize concrete blocks. The volumes of the various living spaces fill in the frame, starting with one quadrant on the top floor and concluding with three quadrants, four floors below at the living-room level.
Unfilled quadrants provide steplike sequences of exterior terraces.
A square staircase located almost at the center of the square plan ties the blunt clarity of the massive exterior, the interior is labyrinthine and intimate. Emphasis on the large openings cut into the cubic mass of the house achieves a monumentality similar to that of the local vernacular. Whoever constructs, destroys nature, and thus intervention of any kind is always seen as something negative. The real problem, however, seems to me to be to cultivate an understanding that construction transforms only a part of nature, that it should engage in dialogue with nature, and that it is up to us, to this generation, to find the way to resolve the conflict with the stubbornly conservative and their committment to anything which was built in the past. Resources Sources on Residence in Riva San Vitale Roger H. Clark and Michael Pause.