Located in a beach town, this holiday home built in the early 1940s was transformed to become the permanent home of a retired couple who will occasionally welcome their children and grandchildren. Having for more than four decades spent their summers in the house, the owners asked for the transformed version of the house to be able to expand the social hierarchies and moods it promoted in the past only during the summer to the whole year. The design process started with a careful examination of the owners’ collection of summer photographs, to allocate architectural mediations that would make it possible for the house and its garden to permanently allow and instigate the unprejudiced and joyful daily life of summer.

In the Teddy House, different daily uses are meant to happen without spatial compartmentalization. The intervention is composed of a continuous ramp, of variable width to accommodate different spatial conditions. In the shower areas, for instance, it widens slightly to fit a bench that favors spontaneous encounters; over the void of the original house it bulges to create a multipurpose space (with folding bunk beds and sleeping cabins); and, finally, it forks to offer views of the garden and the sea.

All the design solutions are meant to turn the house into a pet for its users: something that needs care and with which one can establish emotional ties. This is why the project was called the Teddy House.