_Leading architect John McAslan on building his ideal Tuscan home
Both are churches and both architecturally iconic in their own way. But while one — the marble-fronted San Miniato al Monte basilica, which perches on one of the highest points in Florence — is considered one of the finest Romanesque structures in Tuscany, the other, Giovanni Michelucci’s 1960s-built San Giovanni Battista, overlooking the A11 motorway just outside the city, inspires mixed reactions.
“Every time I go to Florence, I see San Miniato, which is an extraordinarily beautiful early Renaissance church. But another of my favourites is San Giovanni Battista, which was built to honour those who died building the motorway,’ says McAslan.
“It’s a concrete building with an oxidised green copper roof and many people regard it as an eyesore, but I think it’s a modernist landmark and I love it.”
Externally, the recognisably Tuscan aesthetic remains —the stone walls, red tiled roofs and terraces overlooking McAslan has won more than 125 international design awards, including three Europa Nostra awards — Europe’s prize for cultural heritage — and his practice, John McAslan + Partners, is involved in some of the biggest regeneration schemes in London, including King’s Cross station, Camden’s Roundhouse and the Natural History Museum, along with dozens of major projects worldwide.
So it is little surprise that when it came to building his own Italian holiday home, he veered away from the traditional vision of a rustic farmhouse. Externally, the recognisably Tuscan aesthetic remains — the stone walls, red tiled roofs and terraces overlooking hills and olive groves.
Inside, however, “everything is very elemental and stripped back,” he says. “I wanted to make it simple and spartan, to combine my modernism and contemporary architecture. But I also wanted the old and new to sit comfortably, so any new walls had to be as thick as the 18-inch old walls.”
He describes a sense of geometry that governs the house’s new design. “A key move was to create a 90-feet long enfilade through the house, which is a spatial connector and articulates the great scale of the interior,” he says of the 19th century farmhouse, which sits in 65 acres of private woodland near the small town of Castellina in Chianti.
There are polished concrete floors and no skirting boards. “It’s quite monastic,” he comments. One feature he describes, which he designed uniquely for this house, is doors without frames.
“It’s sort of urban in its architecture,” he explains. “It supports the idea that you can take your urban lifestyle to somewhere gloriously rural.
Our homes in London and Italy are basically exactly the same aesthetic. I have art in Italy that used to be on our walls in London and I find that comforting.” McAslan’s connection with Italy began in 2005, when he designed the fashion house Max Mara’s HQ near Milan.
“I worked closely on the project with Max Mara’s chairman Luigi Maramotti, an elegant man who had a particularly sophisticated aesthetic appreciation of architecture and the land,” he comments.
McAslan and his wife Dava then bought a holiday home in the Tuscan hilltop town of San Gimignano, “but beautiful as it was, the town started to get overrun with tourists and the camper vans stretched down to our mill in the valley,” he says. “The house was so low-lying, it was damp and cold in the winter, so we sold it. As soon as I did, I regretted it.”
With a new brief that he wanted somewhere elevated that would bask in sunlight from morning until night, he approached Bill Thomson, Chairman of the Knight Frank Italian Network. Together they found a ruin — in fact, three ruined buildings — tucked away among private woodland, with a river running through it, and there began a meticulous restoration project.
“Bill’s aesthetic judgements were incredibly important throughout the project. We also worked with a local architect, who knew the planning process impeccably. Then the recession came and we stopped overnight,” says McAslan.
When it was time to “reboot the project” in 2011, the house had become even more ruinous, he had simplified his original vision and cut his budget. “I didn’t have a huge budget and I knew when the pot was empty, that was it. It’s our holiday home, not a vanity project.” McAslan plans to spend the summer there with Dava and their three children, who have nicknamed one of the restored outbuildings “the yoga barn”. But much as he enjoys soaking up the views from the terrace in the early evening sun, he doesn’t plan to sit still for long. “Lounging about isn’t my way.
I want to work on the land, build walls, and I’m developing a long term master plan for the woodland with the gardener Dan Pearson,” he says. “We want to make the land an asset.
I think we have an obligation to that land. We can’t just sit and look at it.”
He also has his sights set on nearby Castellina, “a pretty but not touristic working town”, he says. “I’d like to get a redundant industrial building in town back to use, in the same way I did in Glasgow, perhaps as a venue for an arts festival. Once settled, I want to look at what contribution we can make to the area.”
He talks about his love of Italian art, from the Renaissance to the Futurists, of Italian industrial design — “whether it’s tableware or an Olivetti typewriter” — and of Italian architects such as Carlo Scarpa. “What’s lacking is contemporary Italian architecture. There isn’t much of it,” he says.
San GiovanniBattista may not be universally loved, but perhaps McAslan’s pared back farmhouse — which he admits is unlike any other — will draw design pilgrims to the Chianti hills.
Knight Frank's International Department markets some of the finest properties for sale in Italy - from Tuscan farmhouses to historic castles and coastal villas.
The latest edition of Italian View showcases the most spectacular properties for sale across Italy available through Knight Frank.