PRIVATE FOUNDATION
We created a space for an important Italian collector. A place that as well as hosting contemporary artworks (by artists such as Kiefer, Cucchi, Nauman and Gallo) and serial designs (from Gio Ponti to Ron Arad), also needed an archive, an office, accommodation for artists, and an open-plan professional kitchen. The collection was to be visited during events that included the special contribution of top chefs, thus combining haute cuisine with first-rate art and design.
The setting was created in a historical building dating to the 18th century, naturally composed of adjoining spaces and further divided by partitions. The project design choices were made with a view to showing the works off to best effect by enhancing the spaces and establishing a visual connection between adjoining rooms. The new dividing walls are conceived as low screens, and the new volumes have a transparent glass covering that engages with the wooden fabric of the ceilings.
The outstanding formal element lies in the design of the details: a long, continuous crystal shelf, its full thickness illuminated with LED lights set into the wall that gently faces towards the square: four stools designed by Gio Ponti are thus located at strategic points of the views looking out to the exterior; the frames of the ceiling and floor in the same weathering steel used for the shelves of the bookcase and the dividing wall of the kitchen. A leitmotiv of recurring materials that help construct a single, unitary space.
