Our story
Franco Tombari, almost forty years of building sites
Domus Sapientes comes from a building firm in Montecatini Terme and from the man who founded it. Franco Tombari started building in the summer of 1989, almost by chance, and has not stopped since. This is his story, and the story of the firm that is now building the villas of Bosco Orizzontale.
1989
The first building site
In the summer of 1989 Franco is twenty-four and teaches at a nursery school. When the school closes for the summer he looks for three months' work and ends up on a building site, next to an old-school master builder, gruff and demanding.
It is another world: dust, effort, sweat. But between a bucket of mortar and a wall going up, Franco finds that building is creative work and that material can be given a shape. In September he does not go back to the classroom: he leaves teaching and chooses building.
A timber frame going up, one of the firm's building sites Early 1990s
The ruin at Vinci
In the same years Franco tests himself on a small ruin overgrown with brambles, in the hills of Vinci. For three years he works on it at weekends and plans it in his head at night, one step after another. That ruin becomes his practical school.
With the work nearly done, Franco decides to set up on his own. On the day he moves into his new rented home, the landlord asks whether he could renovate a flat over the weekend. Franco replies that from Monday he can do it full time. That is how the firm begins.
A stone house renovated by the firm 1995 to 1998
A cork roof
The firm grows, takes on sites across Tuscany and the Valdinievole and reaches fifteen to twenty workers. Meanwhile Franco grows more and more drawn to a healthy way of living, close to nature, and brings it into the way he builds.
Between 1995 and 1998, renovating his own home, he chooses a ventilated roof insulated with cork and breathable membranes, something almost no one in Italy was building. To get it right he turns directly to Sigfrid Camana in Treviso, president of ANAB, the Italian association for bio-ecological architecture.
From there comes a specialism: alongside conventional building, bio-building. Walls that breathe, natural materials and, above all, the wellbeing of the people who live in the house.
Brick vault and chequered floor, a renovation by the firm 2008 to today
Steady growth
Over the years the firm becomes a point of reference in the area. The sites grow in number and in ambition, and its experience grows with them: houses built from the ground up, whole residential developments, complete renovations and the restoration of historic buildings.
New houses include one on Via Rebocco in Monsummano, two homes at Serravalle Pistoiese, a house by the golf course at Montevettolini, the terraced houses at Traversagna, two houses at Montecatini Alto and a villa by the sea.
Restorations include a farmhouse at Prato rebuilt from top to bottom, a home at Agliana, a large B&B at Vinci, a hotel on Piazza della Signoria in Florence, several buildings at Montecatini Alto and the barrel vault of the Church of the Rocca, restored in full. Jobs of every size and difficulty, followed with the same care from the first excavation to the last finish.
Today, after almost forty years of building sites, that experience comes together in Domus Sapientes: bio-built houses with high energy performance and a low environmental impact. The three villas of Bosco Orizzontale, at Borgo a Buggiano, are what the firm is building now.
A contemporary house built by the firm Some of the firm's work
The courtyard of a farmhouse, with an olive tree in a stone and brick bed 
A facade with pilasters and cornices, restored by the firm 
A staircase with glass treads in a house built by the firm 
A timber-beam ceiling in a renovated hall 
A renovated house with green shutters and a porch 
Terracotta paths laid in herringbone 
A bathroom with a wooden floor and a deep-set window, renovated by the firm 
A marble staircase with a wrought-iron handrail 
A stone pool under construction among the vineyards
Milestones
1989
First building site, as a labourer. In September Franco leaves teaching.
Early 1990s
The ruin at Vinci, then a firm of his own.
1995 to 1998
Up to twenty workers and sites across Tuscany. The cork roof and ANAB: bio-building begins.
Since 2008
New houses and terraced homes, complete renovations, a hotel in Florence, a church vault.
Today
Almost forty years of building sites. Domus Sapientes and the three villas of Bosco Orizzontale.
An idea of healthy living born in 1989, in the sweat of a building site and a love of nature, long before the European Union wrote it into a directive.