Casa Ceppi

Istria is the heart-shaped peninsula at the northern end of the Adriatic that belongs partly to Croatia, partly to Slovenia, and historically and culturally to several traditions at once. The Italian-influenced coast is the better-known face. The hinterland is quieter, characterised by stone hilltop villages, vineyards and olive groves, oak forests, and the truffle-rich soils of the central plateau. Čepić sits in this inland landscape, fifteen minutes from the coast but architecturally and atmospherically a continent away from the seaside resorts. Casa Ceppi occupies a historic rural complex on the edge of the village, a main building and outbuildings grouped around a central courtyard in the typology that defined Istrian farmsteads for centuries before they fell into disuse.

The complex was discovered in a derelict state and restored over several years by Wietersheim Architekten, a German-Austrian studio with offices in Berlin and Salzburg whose approach to the project read as a refusal to start over. The original structure was carefully brought back into use rather than rebuilt as new: the round arches and vaults of the main building are preserved, the oak beam ceilings reconstructed in their original form, and the floor plan kept close to what the building's earlier inhabitants would have recognised. Where the architects intervened with contemporary materials, the contrast is deliberate rather than concealed. New terrazzo floors and wooden floorboards sit alongside fair-faced concrete ceilings and resin bathroom floors; the historic atmosphere is supported, not overwhelmed.