VALENTINO ARCHITECTS speak to Lara Zammit about their residential project La Serenissima which won the award for Overall Interior Residential Project at the 2022 World Architecture Festival in Lisbon.

Valentino Architects’ La Serenissima was named overall winner in the Interior Residential (Single Dwelling) category of the World Architecture Festival 2022, held in Lisbon between November 30 and December 2.

The project is a retrofit residential design that updates a 1990s house located in Attard, originally designed by the modernist artist and interior designer Frank Portelli.

“We inherited a remarkable building to work with,” Valentino Architects say.

“Portelli’s original design and fabric of La Serenissima gave us the grounding to create a successful retrofit project. The fact that we were able to adapt the existing space to accommodate modern-day living, nearly 30 years after the original building had been constructed and to wholly a different programme, speaks to its inherent design durability and DNA.”

Interior views from Valentino Architects’ La Serenissima.

The team endeavoured to push for conservation at all levels of the building, from ensuring they disturbed the overall built fabric of the building as little as possible, to preserving Portelli’s collection of furniture and lighting, his self-made pieces and even his graphically cut floor tiles.

“What we found interesting from our experience at WAF is how much this preservationist approach resonated with the judges,” says the firm, describing how the comments they received were primarily focused on how minimal the impact of their interventions was to the original fabric of the building.

“We chose to design with restraint and respect for what was already existing and what presented itself as usable, and what we learnt from listening to other architects at the festival was that, by and large, this is the direction that the industry is heading in,” Valentino Architects say.

Interior views from Valentino Architects’ La Serenissima.

This shift in direction is evident in the festival’s overall winner – the World Building of the Year – namely the Quay Quarter Tower (QQT) by 3XN in Sydney, which was predominantly a retrofit design.

Environmental performance was also a key feature of La Serenissima, which emphasised also material and practical sustainability.

The need for a cultural shift 

The firm hopes La Serenissima will serve as a conversation starter on how Malta can shift its perception and approach to heritage conservation and a stronger retrofit culture – preserving existing buildings’ original fabric to build a more sustainable future.

Interior views from Valentino Architects’ La Serenissima.

“In order for a meaningful shift towards retrofit, low-impact design culture, two main things need to happen,” Valen­tino Architects say.

“The first is a cultural one – a shift in perception of what is valuable, and also a shift in education over what is worthy of saving. The second is financial – more fiscal incentives for the construction industry to use existing building stock and existing building materials.”

While tax incentives already exist for retrofit, the firm thinks these should be radically escalated.

More views of the interior.

“We’ve done some research around the reuse of buildings and materials in Malta. A new census has just come out, but from the data gathered on the last one, we learnt that a healthy percentage of Malta’s building stock is vacant.

“That is so much potential for reuse just waiting to happen,” the architects continue.

The obsession with demolition and the cult of the new needs to be drastically disincentivised in Malta

They note that, internationally, the idea of building material banks is becoming more prevalent. These would include a stock of existing material that is catalogued and stored for the construction industry to reuse in their new builds.

The kitchen area of La Serenissima.

“Existing buildings must be regarded as material banks; tearing down old structures and sending their material to landfill is environmentally harmful, visually corrosive, and expensive (dumping costs are on an exponential rise),” Valentino Architects say. 

“Instead, we should be meticu­lously deconstructing and recycling materials. This would not only mean a reduction in environmental impact but could introduce huge cost savings.

“The obsession with demolition and the cult of the new needs to be drastically disincentivised in Malta.”

A defining feature that evokes Frank Portelli's crystallised cubism.

Portelli’s house, which he lived in during the latter part of his life, was designed by him in a style reminiscent of the crystallised cubism characteristic of his art.

The architects expressed that the WAF judges were surprised that the house has no heritage status or protection on the islands, saying some may even not consider it beautiful due to its idiosyncrasies. They maintain, however, that it is not beauty which should be the yardstick with which to decide to preserve a building, but rather validity.

“Going forward, we cannot choose to only save and adapt buildings that we think are beautiful – we also need to save and adapt those which are less obvious – because they are valid as building stock and as canvases for reuse.

"We also need to learn to celebrate difference and change our perception over what we consider worthy of saving. La Serenissima is just one example out of countless differing levels of qua­lity architecture that should be used to lead the shift towards a stronger reuse approach,” they say.

Confronted with the impression that such retrofit projects are prohibitive for the average buyer, who may already be financially strained to merely purchase a property, let alone retrofit or conserve it afterwards, Valentino Architects explained that a mode­rate or even minimal budget can still yield quality spaces.

Another view of the interior.

“La Serenissima’s design did have to work to a budget that was by no means excessive. Retrofitting existing buildings can by nature be a cheaper exercise than building places from scratch, because the majority of the spend has already happened – at the building’s inception.

“We also have to think of expense and costliness beyond just the monetary – choosing to reuse and adapt a building puts you 10 steps ahead in terms of sustainability, so your return on investment vis-à-vis its impact on the planet and even people’s immediate environment is often huge.”

The firm maintains the idea that retrofit design is too costly to be taken up at scale is largely a problem of perception.

“We believe everyone can be able to share an architecture that is both sustainable and beautiful, but it needs to start with recognition – recognition of the validity of all existing buildings, their potential for beauty beyond how we have been taught to define it, and the idea that even small-scale, low-impact interventions can have huge impact.”

Malta-based representation included Valentino Architects’ La Serenissima, which was named overall winner in the Interior Residential (Single Dwelling) category; Valentino Architects’ Ħal Caprat Care Village, which was a finalist in both the Future Projects (Health) category and the WAFX Award; and ritchie*studio’s Farsons Old Brewhouse and Trident Park, which was a finalist in the WAFX Award.