Profusely laden with out-of-scale dimensions and misalignments, a project by Italian architecture studio AMAA meditates on the idea of a dwelling. The Golden Box, as the studio titled it because of its gilded brass walls, the enclosure measuring 5m x 5m packs a range of domestic spaces within recesses punctuating its vertical surfaces, where the design deliberately avoided conventional connecting links such as partitions and corridors to slot different spaces. Located in the city of Arzignano in Italy, the residential design has been conceived for a client who sought a peaceful weekend getaway, just a few kilometres from their own home in the city. AMAA studio found the project a promising opportunity to experiment with new ways of living by exploring diverse spatial, conceptual and material directions. The Golden Box sits inside a small apartment from the 1900s, whose Palladian terrazzo floor was restored and partition walls stripped off to accommodate a single, multipurpose living unit.

The practice of architects Marcello Galiotto and Alessandra Rampazzo of AMAA Collaborative Architecture Office for Research and Development cuts through compositional dogmas in search of brave new design opportunities. History, being key to their pressing architectural research, anchors curious narratives that transcend time, space and scale. From adaptive reuse of a former vaulted factory to create their own workspace, repurposing shipping containers within an industrial facility into a cave-like temporary installation, to It's Kind of a Circular Story, a tectonically loaded set up at the Venice Architecture Biennale 2023, the practice upholds tradition while staying free to inventing and transforming.

For The Golden Box, AMAA drew inspiration from experimental living concepts of modernist masters, Le Corbusier, Jean Prouvé and Charlotte Perriand. The Unité d’Habitation housing project in Marseille by the trio delivered exceptional small modular spaces sporting an array of domestic facilities. Backed by meticulous research and refinement, alongside several mockups in the development process, the construction of the Golden Box took three years of work on-site involving close collaboration between the architects and local craftsmen.

A precious spatial device, as Galiotto and Rampazzo described it, The Golden Box doubles as a treasure chest encapsulating necessary everyday spaces such as a kitchen, sleeping area, bathroom and a pocket for relaxation. Contrary to the normative design of a home in which walls, surfaces and objects are kept in alignment with the existing geometry of the parent space, particularly to deliver a certain orderliness in scenes that define one’s place of mundanity and rest, The Golden Box proposes tensions given its misalignment with the perimeter walls and the decorative work on the apartment ceiling. The volume, however, runs parallel to Corso Giuseppe Mazzini, a thoroughfare in the city, whereas a window on its east façade frames the adjacent Mattarello Courtyard. Views of the courtyard spill through the interiors of the bathroom, captured via a curved glass fixed at the corner across the window. AMAA’s close collaboration with Italian metalworking firm De Castelli projected meticulous craftsmanship of brass clad in the form of panels all over the box. A few swathes, however, reveal imperial green marble slabs interjecting the surface of the bathroom and kitchen. The soft green colour piercing the box, as per AMAA, references the copper roofing of the church designed by Italian architect and urban planner Giovanni Michelucci in Arzignano. Elsewhere, the bedroom and relaxation space sports wooden and velvet surfaces, evoking the warmth and comfort of being home.

“Everything unfolds within the depths of the treasure chest,” says AMAA studio, hinting at how the recesses within the box constitute key domestic details, which though the overarching concept alludes to the space edging towards a disquiet horizon, little pockets within the box, however, traverse a keen attention to delivering visual and spatial harmony.

As one enters the home and navigates its perimeter and little utilitarian pockets, moments of surprise abound as spatial irregularities fuse with exquisite material details. As per AMAA, the misalignments nudge one to search for a space that breathes a sense of parallelism, which in this case, is the area adjacent to the kitchen where two windows open onto a balcony overlooking the main street.

“Meticulously crafted with precision, the work capitalises on the macroscopic discrepancy of its placement,” says the design team. A kaleidoscope of explorations around the idea of dwelling was triggered by removing from it the ‘emotionally barren space’ of a corridor—an architectural element typical of traditional homes built between the 1960s and 1980s, that assumes the role of circulation within a building. “Golden Box is more than meets the eye,” AMAA says alluding to its surprising nature and latent promise of unpacking new meanings on what home has been and can be.