The tagline "Infinite variations for a unique home — yours," chosen by Moretti-More, fits perfectly into the drive to create unique experiential journeys in the enjoyment of everything — a need amplified by today's communication models, shaped by speed, social media and personalisation.

There are also strong sustainability components: the very concept of the prefabricated home triggers a series of measures focused on efficiency, constructive rationality and the use of non-toxic materials. Moreover, the building blocks of the project — the materials, renewable energies and home automation — point decisively towards the smart city model and the protection of the landscape.

We meet Valentina Moretti, the founder of Moretti-More, in her beautiful — prefabricated! — home in Franciacorta, within the enchanting grounds of the Bellavista agricultural estate in Erbusco, in the province of Brescia, to understand how, from an enormous industry with fifty years of experience, a gem like Moretti-More can blossom.

Here, Valentina Moretti shows the material and aesthetic qualities of the pigmented concrete that powerfully and authentically characterises the entire living room. © Nuphap Aunyanupha / IdLab

Moretti-More was born under the aegis of Moretti – Building on Human Values, a company with over fifty years of history. What reflections gave rise to this project? With what objectives? And today, what is the size of the company?
Moretti-More was born in 2009, initially as a workshop lasting a few months, in response to a call from my father, Vittorio Moretti, who suggested I return home to Italy, given that I was in New York… where I was perfectly happy. The startup was launched on the market in 2011. I began this journey on the basis of the first question we asked ourselves: how do we innovate the Moretti industry, which has a unique expertise, a long history of built and prefabricated structures in concrete and timber, with turnkey services dedicated to architects, designers and investors? Today there are six of us, pursuing the goal of staying agile. We clearly operate within the Moretti Group, which has 210 employees, so we certainly leverage a great many synergies.

What developments are foreseen for the future?
We have built eight houses so far; this year we will build five, and the goal is to build fifty a year within ten years.

Vittorio Moretti is a visionary entrepreneur, to whom several companies in construction, hospitality (L'Albereta, L'Andana) and wine (Bellavista, Contadi Castaldi, La Badiola and Petra) owe their origins. What did it mean to grow up with a father like him?
It's a very broad topic. I never lacked for anything, so my first question was never how to put food on the table, but rather how to do more and better. I always saw my father through the lens of the challenge to improve, so he has always been a great source of stimulus. And so it is today in our relationship too — stimulating, a clash and an exchange. The search for my own identity has therefore been extremely important, and it ranges across the cultural side of design and architecture, deepening constructive themes that at Moretti are anchored to efficiency, technology, speed and site organisation. My goal now is to translate this enormous know-how organically towards architecture, aesthetics and respect for materials. For me, this is architecture: creating an organism that is coherent in all its parts, in a harmonious way.

In a previous interview, you didn't hesitate to describe yourself as something of the family rebel, did you?
Yes, I would now define my attitude as rebellious: I'm a "troublemaker," in the sense that if I'm told something has always been done a certain way, my first reaction is "Why? Who says so? Could it be done differently?" I also dislike being labelled within a target group, within a category. When creating Moretti-More, during our market analyses in search of competitors, I used to say: "There are no competitors." We are different. Because we work on the uniqueness of the individual.

We've just come from the experience of 999 domande sull'abitare contemporaneo at the Triennale di Milano, where we saw and experienced first-hand a myriad of reinterpretations and evolutions of the concept of living — from homes for Alzheimer's patients to kook sharing, all the way to shared houses. How would you define your concept of living now, today?
Yes, I am trying to draw up a manifesto of living according to Moretti-More. I am trying to do so together with my clients. There are two aspects.

One, the uniqueness of the individual. We lead the client to reflect on their own uniqueness. Sometimes they bring us magazines with photographs of houses, apartments, furnishings. No. We ask: "How do you live?" Let us examine what the primary needs of each individual are: "When you wake up, what is the first thing you do? How do you have breakfast? In the evening, with your children, what do you do?" We must put the person who is purchasing in the best possible position to make a choice, by giving them the tools to do so.

Two, taking responsibility. The moment you build a property, it becomes an integral part of the landscape. Your neighbour will see it, your neighbour's children will see it, people walking past in the street will see it. The emptiness that existed before becomes a building. If, for example, you build something falsely antique, emulating the style of an old farmhouse, you are erasing an era. Because in fifty years' time, when people see a house built in 2018 in the style of a century ago, they will think that 2018 had no style of its own. What you build will last over fifty years. I find here a message similar to the reflections we are having about food. Just as what you eat becomes part of you, so too does what you build contribute to defining your life, your family, your being — and from that moment on, it will form part of the landscape.

"Making people understand that prefabricated can mean quality" seems like a contradiction. So, on the basis of this aspiration, the idea was born; but how did you bring together the pieces to build the team dedicated to this venture? What were the priorities — what was the first thing to be done?
The priority was to understand, having a large industry like Moretti at our disposal — with its enormous capacity for design, speed, use of materials and expertise — how to get the best out of it, how to further enhance all this industrial strength.

The answer we found was that being able to speed up, to monitor, to pre-design means a reduction in timescales, a reduction in costs and quality control.

My first objective was to deliver quality at accessible prices, at market prices. In short, to harness industry to bring architecture into the everyday landscape.

But, given that the areas where you live and where we are — among the vineyards of Franciacorta, for example — are magnificent, has living, working and walking through these areas in fact influenced the Moretti-More project from its very roots (so to speak)?
Yes, but it is a reflection that comes hand in hand with an evolution. I was born and grew up in beauty, in the sense of this greenery, of nature both untouched and cultivated — here there are the vines, there is a respect for the landscape. But then, with my studies in Switzerland, in Mendrisio, at the Academy of Architecture of the Università della Svizzera italiana, I was able to better understand what my own concept of beauty is.

Valentina Moretti's definition of beauty?
For me, beauty is being able to bring together the complexities that lie behind a project. I knew Gualtiero Marchesi very well — he lived right next door. He was very fond of me, and when I used to visit him and he explained a dish to