It’s a Stairway. It’s a Greenhouse. It’s Definitely Not a Chicken Coop (But Don’t Tell the Chickens)

In a walled garden in Genoa, Italy, where Filippo De Mari Casareto Dal Verme’s family has lived for about 150 years, a massive, mint-green staircase recently appeared. Designed by local architecture, design, and landscape studio Caarpa, the folly-like structure connects two levels that were previously joined only by a circuitous path. It also includes a glass-encased space where Filippo, a mathematics professor nearing retirement, plans to "read, paint, listen to music, do nothing, and sleep."

The pavilion is a playful addition to the property, parts of which date back to the 17th century, and it’s inspired in part by Filippo’s idyllic childhood memories. He grew up here among his extended family, and the two houses and garden are now divided between eight siblings and cousins. "Growing up, our mothers would send us into the garden in the afternoons," he recalls. "The spirit of this place is green—it’s about living outside in this beautiful, ancient garden."

Today, Filippo and his wife, Rosita, live on the ground floor of one building and own the two-tiered part of the garden. Their apartment opens out to the top level, and they wanted to add direct access to the lower level, which is sunnier but also windier.

He approached Caarpa, where his nephew Pietro Bartolomeo d’Albertis works, and d’Albertis took charge of reimagining the garden, while architect Fabrizio Polimone designed the built forms. "We began with the stairs," says Polimone. "Then, we wanted to have a little fun with the architecture, so we added the greenhouse—a quiet space to see all parts of the garden."

The solid steel structure, which abuts an existing stone retaining wall, was made off-site in parts and then assembled in the garden above a raw concrete floor. Filippo describes it as a "painful" process that took more than two years due to workflow issues with the fabricator. "It was really, really hard to get him to do things," he recalls.

"It’s not totally contemporary, and it’s not totally of the past. It’s something in between."

—Fabrizio Polimone, Caarpa

The silver lining was the time this gave Polimone and Filippo to refine a number of smaller details, from a slate sink set into an archway in a centuries-old wall to a hammock (which Filippo says was "nonnegotiable"), storage concealed beneath the stair, and a ladder on rails that can be used to access the operable roof panels to control airflow. "We had a lot of time to improve the construction with small details," says Polimone. And, following some lively discussions with both the architect and Rosita, Filippo chose a mint-green color for the powder-coated finish. "All of them said, No, that’s the wrong choice," he says. "But tough luck for them—I’m the owner."