Towards the Macrostructure. Leonardo Ricci’s Ideas for the Unbuilt Pleydell Bouverie House (1958-1960)

Abstract

The essay tries to make more widely known the project of the Pleydell Bouverie House, which was designed by Leonardo Ricci in 1958-60 but never built. In addition, to describe the drawings, many of which have been put in a new light thanks to the Centenary of the architect’s death, the text attempts to use the description of two other realized works to highlight certain characteristics. This is also supported by some three-dimensional diagrams produced during the analysis of the project. These diagrams are part of a wider research carried out by the author of the essay within the dissertation The density of space. Forms of living in the work of Leonardo Ricci at the Department of Architecture Theories and Design of La Sapienza University of Rome. The assumption is that, through this house in particular, Ricci tested architectural elements and strategies aimed at the realization of the macrostructure. A comparison is made with the Cardon House in Castiglioncello and, at the same time, with the building La Nave in the Sorgane district, in Florence. We find this approach interesting in order to imagine both the origins of certain ideas and what the results of the realization of Pleydell Bouverie House might have been. The present paper, therefore, tries to provide not only a description of a single-family house that Ricci never built, but to contribute with a precise observation of certain aspects, aimed at placing this work in the broader discussion of Leonardo Ricci’s approach and vision about architecture.