The ancient Etruscans thrived for some 500 years in central Italy before the Roman Republic was established in 509 BCE. The Roman-Etruscan wars resulted in the overthrowing of the last Etruscan king of Rome and the assimilation of Etruscan culture into the new Roman Empire. The statues make it clear that the Romans and Etruscans were not only co-mingling, but worshipping together at this sacred site. The Italian Culture Ministry describes it as a “unique multicultural and multilingual haven of peace” during a time when the civilizations were mostly at war.

A team of Italian archaeologists unearthed the bronze statues of human figures in September and October from the mud and waters of an ancient pool in San Casciano dei Bagni’s hot springs. Over 2,000 years old and almost perfectly preserved by the unique site conditions, the statues represent the largest deposit of bronze statues of the Etruscan and Roman age ever discovered in Italy.

They date back to between the second century BCE and the first century CE, yet their features are still sharp, and the inscriptions (in both Etruscan and Latin) are still legible. Among the statues are representations of the gods Apollo, his son Asclepius, and Asclepius’ daughter Hygeia, from whose name we get the English word “hygiene.” Back in 2020, when the dig first began, archaeologists discovered a large marble pool of an ancient sanctuary decorated with fountains and altars to these same deities.

Other findings include about 5,000 coins, small votive offerings representing body parts in need of healing, and bronze depictions of internal organs that are shockingly accurate. The findings indicate that Etruscan and Roman families prayed together at the sacred sanctuary of the thermal baths.

“The pool was a sacred place, only the religious custodians could bathe there,” says Ludovico Salerno, a member of the local archaeological association that participated in the work. “Sick people came to the sanctuary in the hopes of being cured and would offer gifts to the gods. It was a place of suffering, and it was a place of hope.”

Researchers have determined that Romans dismantled the sanctuary piece by piece around the year 500 CE, about two centuries after Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire. The statues were then laid at the bottom of the pool and covered with columns and slabs of marble in what archaeologists describe as a reverent and respectful burial.

Together, the findings provide an unusual amount of context for what life was like in that particular place at that particular time, potentially allowing scholars to rewrite the history of the transition from the Etruscan to Roman civilizations. “We can describe all the life, day by day here, through four or five centuries, so this is incredible,” says archaeologist Emanuele Mariotti.

Excavations will resume next spring, and the statues will be displayed in a new museum planned for the site.

The post Shockingly Well-Preserved Statues Unearthed in Italy Rewrite the History of Ancient Rome first appeared on Dornob.

Researchers at Italy’s University of Naples Federico II developed a bartending robot called BRILLO that does more than just sling precisely measured drinks. Computer scientists at the university used machine-learning algorithms to teach the robot how to hold complex conversations. BRILLO, which stands for “Bartending Robot for Interactive Long-Lasting Operations,” can make small talk or respond to customers who just want to vent. It can even sense the tone of the conversation to gauge whether it’s appropriate to be cheerful, playful, or serious.

The team at the university’s Projects of Intelligent Robotics and Advanced Cognitive Systems (PRISCA) lab began working on the robot bartender back in 2020. They collaborated with Totaro Automazioni, an Italian manufacturer of food assembly line machines, to get the physical part down. After all, making good drinks is still a bartender’s primary job. For now, at least, performing as expected requires the robot to look less than convincing. It’s weirdly tall, with enormous, multi-jointed low-slung arms that rotate in various directions to grab ingredients from various locations behind the bar.

A brief video posted on Twitter shows how the BRILLO looks while moving these very robotic arms. A mannequin-like head with an immovable face glows faintly, and the body is dressed in a vest and bowtie. The effect is far from realistic, but for now, that’s not the point. Professor Silvia Rossi, one of the project’s lead researchers, told CNBC that her team just wanted to take the concept of a cocktail vending machine a step further and test whether a robot could mimic the social aspects of a bartender’s job.

Their goal is for BRILLO to be able to recognize customers, remember their favorite drinks, and ask them questions based on conversations they’ve had in the past. The researchers taught BRILLO to study customers’ faces and speech patterns to gauge what kind of mood they’re in. That will help it choose how to start the conversation.

For the foreseeable future, BRILLO is just a learning tool. Its creators don’t plan to market and sell it. Rossi notes there are a lot of wrinkles that need to be ironed out, not the least of which is protecting the privacy of human customers whose personal data is already being gathered from every conceivable source. Spilling your troubles to a robot bartender sounds like an action that could have consequences, even if you aren’t exactly confessing to murder.

Rossi and her team believe that robots like BRILLO will never fully replace human workers, no matter how advanced they get. Even if conversations with artificial intelligence eventually feel as natural as can be, it’s unlikely they’ll be able to fulfill all of our social needs. Robots like BRILLO could step in to alleviate labor shortages or take on the kind of grunt work most humans don’t want to do, but the extent to which that will affect our own livelihoods and quality of life remains to be seen.

The post BRILLO the Bartending Robot Can Fulfill Your Social Needs While Slinging Cocktails first appeared on Dornob.

Co-designed and built with teachers and 44 students from Haroun Tazieff high school in Saint-Paul-lés-Dax, France, ProtoCAMPO is the third iteration of a building technique developed by Frédérique Barchelard and Flavien Menu, themselves former fellows of Villa Medici (2019-2020). The first was the Proto-Habitat, built during their stay in Rome, and the second was the SOLARproto, a 300-square-meter exhibition space built in Amsterdam. ProtoCAMPO takes those concepts and builds upon them, tailored to its unique environment and purpose in one of the city’s most beautifully preserved Renaissance palaces — not to mention home to The French Academy in Rome.

“ProtoCAMPO is both low-tech and high-tech,” explain the designers. “Low tech, as it is assembled by hand using traditional and basic carpentry and joinery assemblage techniques to build up the prefabricated timber pieces. High-tech, in the conception of the inflatable cupola that can be implemented in less than an hour to unfold a six-meter diameter dome weighing only 300 kilograms. protoCAMPO subtly plays with the rhythm of the Villa Medici’s garden framing views of the 200-year-old pine trees and the historic villa. The repetitive timber structure echoes the Renaissance grid structure of the garden being both classical and wild. The dialogue between the pavilion and the surrounding nature evolves over the day, playing with the sun’s path and the rhythm of the garden.”

The cupola of the pavilion shelters up to 350 occupants while remaining open to the sun and wind, and the wooden base is sturdy enough to withstand heavy traffic. In the first week of the festival, protoCAMPO welcomed 300 high school students as part of the Residence Pro educational program developed by Villa Medici with the Nouvelle-Aquitaine Region. Now, it’s hosting events, concerts, dinners, shows, and some of the villa’s cultural events for the remainder of the year. Like WALD’s other “proto-architecture” projects, it’s prefabricated, locally sourced, and modular, so it can be quickly assembled and disassembled. No word yet on how it will be used next.

Located near Rome’s famous Spanish Steps, the Villa Medici was designed by Bartolomeo Ammanati and built by Grand Duke of Tuscany Ferdinando de Medici in the 16th century as an estate and open-air museum celebrating the Medici family’s influence in Rome. Its grounds include Roman bas-reliefs and statues, botanical gardens, formal gardens, and palatial architecture. In 1803, it became home to The French Academy in Rome, which aims to welcome artists, creators, and art historians in residence, curate cultural and artistic programs, and conserve the palace’s architectural and landscape heritage.

The post ProtoCAMPO: An Inflatable Dome-Shaped Pavilion for the Villa Medici in Rome first appeared on Dornob.

The answer was something unique. “A place where the cuisine is based on the Italian virtues and combines them with the Japanese. It does not exist in Denmark. Both kitchens focus on simple, good ingredients and don’t combine a whole lot of different flavors — they keep it simple,” explained Andrea Calducci, Head Chef of the new Restaurant Levi, in an interview with European media.

Calducci, a renowned chef who has run prestigious restaurants in Shanghai, London, and Dubai, was persuaded to come to Denmark by Restaurant Levi founders Jesper Boelskifte and Peter Trauboth. They named their new place, built out of a former parking garage, after their muse, famed Italian grappa master Romano Levi.

“Romano Levi managed to create his very own universe, where both the product and the packaging were completely unique,” the owners say on their website. “That’s what we strive for with Levi. We want to make something completely clean and personal — a restaurant and a kitchen that doesn’t hide behind anything.”

The fusion of Japanese and Italian food is meant to be a seductive surprise with every visit. “Every time we (re)visit the honest and simple Italian cuisine, we are overwhelmed by how little it takes to create an irresistible taste. At the same time, we are captivated by the elegance and constant balancing on a knife edge that we find in Japanese cuisine. We are thrilled by the exotic ingredients and the many unexpected flavors,” the website explains. “When our chefs pull on the apron, they are forced to experiment in the meeting between the two approaches. Thus, the weekly menu at Restaurant Levi is the result of a constant search and curiosity that characterizes our kitchen.”

The company’s Instagram feed highlights pictures of dishes like pasta covered in crispy octopus, lamb, and artichoke in a salty Japanese broth, and fine cuts of wagyu beef over risotto.

The bistro’s interior design was crafted by restaurant partner Johannes Torpe with an eye towards the warmth and comfort of old Italy and the sophistication of Japan. The color scheme of jade green and natural wood is soothing and sumptuous. The custom banquettes curve around the restaurant, flanked by window views of the bicycle-lined avenue of inner-city Copenhagen. The green-swirled marble countertops and the terrazzo floors bring in extra Italian flair. Public reception has also been overwhelmingly positive. Since its opening in March, Restaurant Levi has boasted fully booked weekends.

“The future of the Danish gastronomic scene is bright. Copenhagen is — rightly so — among the most hyped food cities in the world, and so it will continue,” adds Jesper Boelskift. “In the run-up to the coronavirus pandemic, we [were] once again seeing a resurgence of new places and new concepts. The lockdown was tough, but it also gave room for new thoughts and ideas. We also felt that it gave time and space for the development of our restaurant, which is why today we stand here with Levi.”

The post Copenhagen’s Restaurant Levi is Fusion Food at Its Finest first appeared on Dornob.

The two-story brick building, that dates back to the 1800s, had good bones, but all the walls and ceiling had been bafflingly covered up with white boards for the past few decades and the wooden ceiling was starting to deteriorate. The design team, led by company founder Tommaso Fantoni, peeled back construction layers to expose beautiful brick archways that ended up informing the entire plan.

“All edges are rounded where possible, including one of the casted concrete walls, to give fluidity to all movements, to the touch, and to the eye,” explained Fantoni. Even the master bed with its rounded-corner platform was given a custom semi-circular headboard to fit into one of the brick arches.

Though it has only two bedrooms, with 3,200 square feet, the area has been well apportioned for the owner’s large gatherings. “It’s a great space for parties,” Fantoni told Wallpaper. “They frequently get a hundred people here.”

The common rooms include the kitchen and dining room, as well as a spacious living room with a built-in set of tiered seating in flowing curves. There are also extra sitting rooms, one on the main level and one upstairs overlooking the entertaining area below.

Fantoni took a personal interest in creating a customized space for the owner, who is also a sailing champion. “I devised everything down to the toilet paper holder,” he said.

Using a materials palette of primarily wood, iron, brick, and concrete, Fantoni created special features like a circular staircase, enclosed in a rounded concrete stairwell, with boat propeller-inspired oak stair treads.

The floors were redone in wide oak planks, with gaps blackened to mimic the look of a sailing vessel deck.

The master bath is clad in soot-gray slate from Liguria, a favorite sailing haunt of the owner, a color choice that also offers a soothing serenity to the room.

“It’s the quality of the design and the details that appeals to me,” the architect said. “The simplest things are always the most beautiful.”

Attention to those types of details was bred into Frantoni. Architecture and design were the bread and butter of his childhood as the grandson of famous architect and furniture designer Osvaldo Borsani, and the son of accomplished designers Valeria Fantoni-Borsani and Marco Fantoni. Tommaso’s own creative acumen landed him a decade-long career with Noman Foster’s New York branch of Foster + Partners, after which he found his own studio in 2015.

In fact, Frantoni unwittingly brought in aspects from his heritage to this garage restoration. The hollowed-out half-moon shapes that function as handles on the many sliding doors in the residence came out of his familial subconscious. “It’s exactly the same half-moon as in the master bedroom in the Borsani house,” he said. “But I had no idea until after I had completed this project and I opened up my grandfather’s house this spring. Some things just come to you.”

The post A Garage in Milan’s Chinatown Gets a Chic Loft Update first appeared on Dornob.

After his formal education was cut short at age 13 so he could support his family, Paboy began work in his uncle’s tailor shop, quickly developing a “keen eye for choosing fabrics and color combinations.” But in 2013, after surviving 22 years under the brutal dictatorship of Yahya Jammeh, he fled his country for the pursuit of freedom and fortune elsewhere. Over the course of two brutal and dangerous years, he journeyed across the desert and Mediterranean Sea, where he finally landed in Italy.

He was immediately placed in a migrant camp, where conditions were so overcrowded and deplorable that it was closed two years later. Paboy was then transferred to a camp in Naples, where his life began to turn around.

Getting a job making tiles and vases at a prestigious majolica factory, the African artist found lodgings with a freelance British journalist, who provided him with a room of his own. However, by the end of 2019, Paboy lost his job when the slow wheels of bureaucracy prevented his Italian asylum papers from being renewed on time.

A few months later, the COVID pandemic kept the world and Paboy at home, where he discovered a sewing machine and some leftover fabric in his host’s apartment. With inspiration from the textile pattern and permission from the journalist, he dusted off his tailoring skills. “My mind went straight to how lovely it would look as a cushion,” he said in an interview with House and Garden.

He posted the resulting throw pillow on a new Instagram account in the middle of 2020, and his work was an immediate hit. Calling his brand “In Casa by Paboy,” the 28-year-old designer has since built a cushion empire that ships out 80 to 100 pillows a month, selling for €100 apiece. His distinctive style and story have also caught the attention of major publications like the Financial Times and Vogue, as well as collaborators and stores interested in stocking his creations.

His design inspiration comes in part from Naples, which he says now feels like home. “The city is very colorful — all the buildings, the paintings. When I was working in the factory, the ladies all made tiles with different, vibrant colors and I was inspired by those combinations, too,” Paboy explains.

Success has come quickly, but it has not always gone smoothly. “Honestly, I haven’t always felt like I wanted to be a business owner,” he said in another interview with Courier. “I was very good at football — that’s what I dreamed of. Being a business owner is something I didn’t have any experience of… Being an immigrant and setting up a business is not easy; it’s quite hard.”

One payoff though, is being able to fully care for his family back home. The artisan happily explains that “Everything I do is for my family, for my sisters; I’m now in a position where I can support them from here.”

Paboy hopes to expand his offerings in the near future, adding: “I don’t want to rely on only cushions. I want to make more homewares — tablecloths, bedsheets, duvet covers.”

Unfortunately, scalability remains an issue for his company. Even after hiring two other African asylum-seekers to help him, demand far outstrips their resources. And because Paboy wants to keep everything handmade for the foreseeable future, he’s currently in talks with immigrant associations in Naples to enlist more help and simultaneously help his fellow refugees into better lives of their own.

The post Paboy Bojang’s Pillows Pay Tribute to Immigrant Ingenuity first appeared on Dornob.

Consisting of a total of 200 artists from 58 countries, the Biennale was curated by Cecelia Alemani and is itself entitled “The Milk of Dreams.” The title draws its inspiration from the title of a book by surrealist artist Leona Carrington, which Alemani describes as being an exploration of “a magical world where life is constantly re-envisioned through the prism of imagination.”

Upon exploring the exhibition’s many poignant offerings, it’s easy to see why the imaginative curator landed on the theme. An eclectic mix of eye-openers and statement-making pieces, the often surreal and exploratory pieces of the Biennale speak to its global sensibility and penchant for pushing the envelope (and in some cases, dropping jaws with in-your-face, dreamlike artwork).

Below are some of the most standout pieces on display this year, running the gamut from fantastically nightmarish metamorphic mashups to stark depictions of reality that speak to the horrors of war and the power of resilience:

“We Walked The Earth” by Uffe Isolotto

Occupying the entire Danish Pavilion, Isolotto’s piece is emblematic of this year’s Biennale and its surrealist namesake. Depicting a human/horse hybrid lying prone in the center of a stark, messy interior, the piece evokes the dramas of a transhuman world afflicted by the same cycles of life and death, hope and despair, that connect us all.

“Elephant” by Katharina Fritsch

Larger than life and less fantastical than many of its counterparts, German artist Katharina Fritsch opted for size, grandeur, realism, and attention to detail on this piece. But that doesn’t make it any less impactful. Fritsch is also a co-recipient of the Biennale’s Golden Lion Award for lifetime achievement this year.

“Gyre” by Yunchul Kim

Stunning, silver, and described as “a sprawling body of entanglements” by its creator, this standout in the Korean pavilion is pseudo-realistic — a tangled up knot of fantastic proportions that doesn’t rely on animate objects and their relationship to the world, yet somehow evokes a feeling of movement with its twisty form.

“Brick House” by Simone Leigh

Formerly located in NYC’s High Line in 2019, U.S. artist Simone Leigh’s “Brick House” is a majestic bronze sculpture depicting an imposing figure that’s part Black woman, part house, “registering as a vessel, a dwelling, a space of comfort, and as a site of sanctuary…a Black woman’s body as a site of multiplicity,” says Madeline Weisburg. Leigh has also won a Golden Lion for her monumental and momentous sculpture.

“Untitled” by Raphaela Vogel

Vogel’s contribution was a jaw-dropper for sure — a perfect example of the German artist’s experimental repertoire, which often raises eyebrows with its metaphoric, sometimes metaphysical statements. Here, Vogel went for the shock factor, depicting a large, cartoonish model of a penis being pulled by a fleet of white giraffes, complete with explanatory plates describing various diseases and conditions like erectile dysfunction. Cartoonish? Yes. Shocking? Definitely.

“Piazza Ucrainia” by Boris Filonenko, Lizaveta German, and Maria Lanko

In referring to the Venice Biennale this year, Wallpaper recently said, “Stark reminders of a raging war were never far from sight or mind,” and this is most evident in the centerpiece of the Ukrainian pavilion. A piece created by the pavilion’s curators, this stirring sculpture contains a multitude of stacked sandbags to represent the country’s efforts to protect their art from war damage — a reminder that’s both stirring and symbolic. Other notable Ukrainian offerings include “The Fountain of Exhaustion” by artist Pavlo Makov, which only arrived at the exhibition due to the perilous efforts of curator Maria Lanko to transport the piece beginning on the same day Russia began its attack.

“Valeriia” by JR

Statements and reactions to the war in Ukraine were not limited to the country’s own pavilion. French artist JR presented a large photograph of a young Ukrainian refugee in this statement-maker that puts a human face on the tragedies of war. It’s also been featured on the cover of Time and is part of the ongoing exhibition “This is Ukraine: Defending Freedom.”

“Invitation of the Soft Machine and Her Angry Body Parts” by Jakob Lena Knebl and Ashley Hans Scheirl

A curvy, faceless hybrid that’s equal parts sensual and unrecognizably recognizable, “Invitation…” is another potent representation that’s visceral and colorful, perfectly in keeping with exhibition’s central surrealist theme. Located in the Austrian pavilion, the sculpture is perched above the viewer on a plinth, presented as a figure to be worshipped and admired.

The Venice Biennale 2022 runs from April 23rd through November 22nd, 2022 at the Giardini and the Arsenale.

The post This Year’s Venice Biennale is Full of Surrealism — and Stark Reminders first appeared on Dornob.

“The idea is simple: recovering projects by little-known and unknown architects, works that remain in the shadow of the great masters, looking into ‘minor figures,’ and combining different backgrounds in the history of architecture to complete students’ university studies,” The Forgotten Architecture Facebook page explains. “It is a collective experience that goes beyond the purely architectural, a virtual world peopled by more than 27,000 members from a variety of different professional backgrounds.”

The book is a compilation of many of the site’s exciting finds, with each page listing the Facebook contributor that introduced it to the group. It went on sale from March 7th to June 7th only, never to be sold again as a way of turning it into an instant collector’s item.

In case you can’t get your hands on a copy, here are some of our favorite highlights:

Casa Saldarini

Nicknamed the “Dinosaur House” or “Whale House,” the zoomorphic residence was designed by architect Vittorio Giorgini in 1962 in Piombino, Italy. Giorgini’s objective was to create an animal-like building that looked like it was at home in its own natural environment. Evocative curved walls flow organically through the unique house’s interior and exterior.

Complesso Rezidenciale di Piazza Grande

Built over the course of a decade starting in 1979, the Piazza Grande in Naples, Italy was designed by native architects Aldo Loris Rossi, Donatella Mazzoleni, Annalisa Pignalosa, and Luigi Rivieccio. Its influences were a mashup of Italian rationalism (like the Royal Crescent and Circus of Bath) and the organic architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright. The circular complex includes private residences, offices, and commercial spaces, as well as schools, gyms, and public outdoor gathering areas.

Aquila Petrol Station

Originally constructed in 1949 in Sesto San Giovanni, Italy, this architectural treasure has since been demolished, but pictures of its undulating vaulted roof make clear that it must have been a striking sight for drivers along the Serenissima highway back in the day.

Chiesa del Sanatorio

Perhaps the first rationalist religious architecture in Italy, the church of the Vittorio Emanuele II sanatorium in Alessandria was built in 1926. Its concrete design sticks to only the essential geometric elements.

Arnaldo Pomodoro House

Italian sculptor Arnaldo Pomodoro had this “non-house” designed by renowned architect Ettore Sottsass Jr. in 1968. It was to be a place for welcoming clients and friends at social events. The geometric lines and emptiness created a “metaphysical” and “entropized” space that invited people to “stay but not to live.”

Roybal Comprehensive Health Center

Of course, not all the featured architecture in the book is from Italy. Known as “La Clínica de Colores” by the Spanish-speaking inhabitants of Los Angeles, California’s Roybal Comprehensive Health Center was designed in 1979 with a heavy Latin influence showcased in its colorful tiled facade and inset Aztec imagery.

The post Forgotten Architecture You Have to Check Out first appeared on Dornob.

International design office Carlo Ratti Associati (CRA) has teamed up with Office for Living Architecture (OLA) and non-profit organization GAL Terre del Po to create “The Tree Path,” a dreamy route for cyclists and pedestrians that rests on two parallel rows of plants acting as pillars. The elevated path leads to Sabbioneta, a UNESCO World Heritage Site in northern Italy.

The Tree Path aims to explore sustainable mobility while “blending the natural and the artificial.” The use of a living supportive structure is one of the most remarkable parts of this project. OLA is one of the world’s leading experts in a technique called Baubotanik (“botanic construction” in German), which adapts living trees into architectural elements. The trees are incorporated into all kinds of structures, including full-scale buildings, contributing shade, natural cooling and air filtering, oxygen production, CO2 absorption, and a good habitat for local wildlife.

Roughly 1,000 trees will grow around a stainless steel platform and hand rail for this project, building and transforming the path structure over the course of several years. The path makes its ascent in three different levels, rising from the ground to a height of nearly 20 feet to bypass road traffic and waterways, entering Sabbioneta from an elevated perspective. Digital sensors will also be incorporated in the pathway to measure factors like air pollution and make sure all the living organisms along the path are capable of withstanding the structural load. This is envisioned as an “internet of trees,” connected by an artificial intelligence system provided by the Mindicity Urban Intelligence Platform.

“What if one day we could grow architecture like a tree? We are still very far from that future, but we can start exploring the convergence between the natural and the artificial. We can use trees as elements of construction, while leveraging the data from digital technologies to get a better understanding of the surrounding environment,” comments Carlo Ratti, founding partner at CRA and director of the Senseable City Lab at MIT.

The new path will connect Sabbioneta to the existing VENTO Cycle Route, a 435-mile-long bicycle path that runs along the Po River in northern Italy, via the town of Casalmaggiore. For many centuries, the Po River was a major navigable river in Europe, transporting goods and people between Turin in the south and Venice in the north. The Romans even used it to move armies and carry out their conquests throughout Europe. Following the Po honors this cultural heritage and encourages both Italians and international visitors to ride bikes instead of driving. The Tree Path adds yet another destination to explore along the route.

If you’re wondering how living trees could possibly support the weight and strain of the path and its users, check out previous Baubotanik projects created by students at the University of Stuttgart. The Tree Path is similar to an elevated pathway they completed, wherein flexible, fast-growing trees like willows are pictured wrapping their trunks around metal structural elements for stability.

The post A Treetop Bike Path Winds Through the Picturesque Italian Countryside first appeared on Dornob.

The south Tyrol AEON Hotel was designed by noa* (network of architecture), a firm based in Bolzano, Italy who used this project to highlight the boundaries and connection between old and new worlds.

“The creation of an ambivalent tension between the centuries-old tradition of the rural complex and an exclusively modern statement was the basic principle underlying the design process,” explains designer Christian Rottensteiner on the noa* website.

Instead of one large structure, the architects decided to begin the theme of duality with two separate barn-shaped buildings. The exterior forms pay homage to the 550-year-old farm on which the B&B resides. Gabled roofs and wood siding harvested from the property’s own forest, as well as the family’s old coat of arms from 1464 posted on the entry, highlight the past of the hotel that was formerly the historic Lobishof Inn. Pentagonal floor-to-ceiling windows on every floor provide stunning views of the Merano Alps, Dolomites, and Rittner Horn.

Moving inside, the first building houses the common areas, including a reception desk, bistro, bar, and wellness area. The color contrast is immediately apparent and striking. A deep blue covers the ceiling and top one-third of the walls, while whites and creams comprise the bottom two-thirds and the floor. The hues were chosen specifically to convey a sense of the past and future: “A soft beige – communicates feelings of being grounded, familiar, delicateness – meets a mystical blue that embodies the future, the mysterious, the uncertain,’ the noa* website says.

These tint divisions don’t merely run through the walls, but also cut across furniture and fixtures at the exact same horizontal planes. Only in the wellness area is the color play inverted, with navy on the bottom and white on top, representing the feeling of wading or floating in water.

To enter the second building, a collection of 15 guest suites, there’s no need to enter the outside world again. Instead, the designers created a tunnel between the two structures, ingeniously buried under a manmade hill. Moving through this tunnel is a similarly transportive experience, as the walls are intersected by harsh angles of contrasting blue and white. “Guests are invited to move through and sense this cosmos between polarizing environments,” explains noa* interior designer Patrick Gürtler.

The tone of the B&B shifts in the guest suite barn, where all color divisions become vertical. Rugs, bed, tables, and even lamp shades cannot escape being split by these lines. The Gallery Suite is perhaps the most arresting example of the separated verticality, as it features a two-story-high ceiling and a “living platform” on the roof for cozily gazing into the heavens.

In the end, the architects hope their design will help guests sense the unseen bonds around them. “Boundaries – between past and future, between dream and reality, between inside and outside: noa* makes the invisible lines visible, which become part of the full picture and, above all, instead of a separation, a connection between two worlds.”

The post AEON: Italian B&B Toes the Line Between Modern and Rural first appeared on Dornob.

That’s what Italian architect Stefano Larotonda of Last Studio decided to do for a home in Rovagnate, northern Italy. The existing structure was a typical two-story Italian country home set into the base of a slope, but the clients wanted a new entrance, additional green space, and a brighter, more usable basement. The only way to grant their wishes was to literally carve out the basement, creating a new sunken courtyard around it.

“That means a new kind of space in the basement and subsequent creation of an outdoor space that is configured as an open-air room,” says Larotonda. “This new environment allows for the lighting of the underground area, which becomes a large hall described by a series of wooden inner partitions that define different spatial configurations.”

Working in collaboration with Andrea Tregnago, Larotonda essentially created a giant trench around the home to expose the basement walls. This new outdoor space is a full story below the grade of the yard around it, its edges defined by new walls made of cast-in-place reinforced concrete. Vertical wooden staves were used as the formwork, imprinting the concrete with their patterns and knots for a more organic appearance. The exposed basement walls were then replaced with the same materials, punctured by circular windows and an oversized sliding glass door.

A large round cutout in the garden wall now acts as the home’s new entrance, beckoning visitors into the light-filled courtyard where Larotonda has installed stepping stones, volcanic rock, and grasses designed to offer proper drainage when it rains. From the driveway looking in, you see an interesting arrangement of diagonal walls sloping toward the lawn above. From the lawn, these walls stick up several feet above grade, looking almost like the prow of a ship.

Inside, the newly renovated basement is suddenly flooded with daylight. The concrete floors were darkened and polished for a slate-like effect, and the interior walls are made of three layers of solid fir stained with green impregnating paints for a sheer, washed look. Together, these colors are meant to evoke the tones of the surrounding mountain landscape. The circular motif is also drawn inside, repeated with cutouts in the wood walls and the shape of the bathroom mirror.

It may not have been the most obvious solution, but excavating the basement level was a clever way to give the clients exactly what they wanted, create a new outdoor space that’s truly private, and make the most of the existing structure instead of wastefully tearing it down and starting anew.

The post Last Studio Turns Unused Basement into Tranquil Underground Patio first appeared on Dornob.

Tuscan style is just one of the latest in this parade of design ideas du jour that include trends like cottagecore and California cool. But unlike those other trends, Tuscan style is less a blend of design aesthetics that form a signifying and distinctive thread. Rather, it’s more a design style influenced by a specific region and overall vibe.

Instantly recognizable, Tuscan style can often be eerily similar to Southwestern, at least in terms of materials. Think stucco, terracotta, and warm, rustic woods. But where Southwestern style relies on bright colors and patterns, crafted materials like woven and handmade items, and vivid ceramics, Tuscan style design takes a slightly different approach.

So what exactly is it?

In Your Element

Tuscan style largely revolves around natural hues and rustic palettes influenced by warm earth tones. These natural design elements stretch well beyond the color scheme, extending to the materials used both in and outside Tuscan-inspired homes. Because sandstone and limestone are commonly found in central Italy, they’re often incorporated into this type of design aesthetic. Marble is another popular material that’s often used for decorative touches and indoor features like floors, arches, and pillars. Overall, these features create a natural look that evokes Tuscany’s sun-baked beauty and earthiness.

Elegant Simplicity

During ancient Roman times, people often flocked to the warm hillsides of Tuscany to escape the bustling and often contentious city life. Thus, their countryside homes tended to evoke warm, inviting feelings not constrained by austerity, embracing the loveliness of nature with a simplistic style that was both well used and well loved. Wide, wooden plank floors, shutters, doors, and windows create a warmth that contrasts well with color-washed stucco walls that appear as if they were borne out of the earth itself.

The furnishings also evoke this straightforward, subtle simplicity. Think clean lines, well-worn, natural woods, and accents that incorporate tile, marble, and wrought iron features. Other popular materials include copper and terracotta, but think moderation, not maximalism. Simple yet rustic touches like a terracotta backdrop in the kitchen, majolica dinnerware to add a bit of color and texture, and copper pots hanging from a wrought iron shelf. The palette, though natural, does incorporate some color. Blues and greens are used to create a cooling effect while warm ochres, golds, and yellows evoke the warm Tuscan sun.

Outdoor Oeuvre

And don’t forget about the outdoors! Tuscan-style villas often have extended outdoor areas that open up to include lovely green spaces within a central courtyard. Marble is also a central feature here, in the form of statuary or even water fountains that often form the center of attention. Still, Tuscan-style outdoor areas, while usually contained within brick or stone walkways in a courtyard design, are also meant to look a bit wild, kind of like letting nature take its course. Think wildly growing greenery swaying in the breeze, tall grasses, and an overall uncultivated look that adds to the charm and creates that countryside villa feel.

Tuscan design style is a great way to bring the natural, sun-kissed look of the central Italian countryside into your home. Just work in some warm, welcoming tones accented with muted blues, greens, and yellows, natural elements like wood, stone, and marble, and accents like wrought iron features and terracotta tiles, and you’ll have yourself a true Tuscan villa in no time.

The post Looking for a Big Change? Try Tuscan Style in 2022 first appeared on Dornob.

In 2013, Italian architect Dario del Bufalo, an expert on ancient stone and marble, was in New York to give a lecture and sign copies of his book Porphyry. Included in the book was a photo of a red and green mosaic that had once been part of the dance floor on one of emperor Caligula’s extravagant “party ships.”

“There was a lady with a young guy with a strange hat that came to the table,” Del Bufalo told CBS’ 60 Minutes. “And he told her, ‘What a beautiful book. Oh, Helen, look, that’s your mosaic.’ And she said, ‘Yeah, that’s my mosaic.’”

The architect chased down the young man, who led them to art dealer and gallery owner Helen Fioratti, who did in fact own the ancient tile work and had mounted it to a pedestal as a coffee table decades earlier. The artwork was subsequently confiscated by New York authorities and returned to the Italian government.

Emperor Caligula, one of the most despised Roman rulers, was known for his violence and over-the-top opulence. Among other things, he commissioned two giant pleasure barges (one was as long as an Airbus A380 plane) to sit on Lake Nemi. After his assassination in 41 A.D., the ships were sunk and remained at the bottom of the lake until the 1920s, when Italian dictator Benito Mussolini had the lake emptied. Hundreds of artifacts were recovered over the following years and put in a museum, but as the Nazis retreated from Italy in 1944, both the ships and the museum were destroyed by fire.

Because the mosaic-turned-coffee table shows no signs of fire damage, authorities suspect it was either stolen from the museum before the blaze or taken for a private collection before it could ever make it to the museum.

“These items may be beautiful, storied, and immensely valuable to collectors, but willfully disregarding the provenance of an item is effectively offering tacit approval of a harmful practice that is, fundamentally, criminal,” New York County District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance, Jr. said in a statement speaking of the mosaic, as well as two other artifacts recovered and returned to Italy.

“It was an innocent purchase,” Fioratti told the New York Times in 2017. “It was our favorite thing and we had it for 45 years.”

She and her husband reportedly bought it from a Roman noble family in the 1960s, through a sale brokered by an Italian police official known for finding Nazi-looted art after World War II. When the millennia-old artifact was seized, the Fiorattis were not prosecuted, and although they still feel they have a legitimate claim to it, they did not fight the confiscation.

“I felt very sorry for her,” Del Bufalo said of Fioratti, “but I couldn’t do anything different, knowing that my museum in Nemi is missing the best part that went through the centuries, through the war, through a fire, and then through an Italian art dealer, and finally could go back to the museum. That’s the only thing I felt I should have done.”

At any rate, Italy is happy to have reclaimed one of its priceless pieces of history.

“The mosaic testifies how important and luxurious these imperial ships were,” Nemi Mayor Alberto Bertucci said in March, when the artwork was installed at the Museum of Roman Ships. “These [boats] were like buildings: They were not supposed to sail and they confirm the greatness of this emperor who wanted to show the greatness of his rule of the Roman empire through these ships.”

“This is a great day for Nemi and our entire territory!” the mayor added.

The post Ancient Roman Mosaic Recovered After Spending 50 Years as a Coffee Table first appeared on Dornob.

“The circumstances we have experienced recently have led us to live the home environment even more intensely and to devote to it the attention that the daily frenzy often made us lose,” Dolce and Gabbana told Vogue in a recent interview.

The Casa collection is exactly what you’d expect from the storied Italian design house: unapologetically maximalist. Everything from textiles to dishes are adorned with the swirling Mediterranean Blue pattern, the Sicilian-inspired Carretto motif, Leo leopard print, and Zebra print, all celebrating the beauty of Italian culture. “We wanted an explosion of colors, emotions, [and] scents,” the designers say. “Each theme embodies a different lifestyle.”

Storming into the typically minimalist, monochromatic world of contemporary interior design, Dolce & Gabbana bring their sensuous Italian flair to the Casa collection. Each piece is both fun and functional, exuding sunny optimism and a desire to be seen. The familiar D&G motifs make the furniture, crockery, glasses, dinnerware, and tablecloths feel like a natural extension of the brand and imbue traditional Italian artisanal crafts with a little bit of extra opulence. Dolce & Gabbana collaborated with Venetian heritage brands and artists like Murano glassmakers Barbini and Salviati and luxury textile company Tessitura Luigi Bevilacqua to bring the collection to life.

Consisting of over 300 pieces, the designer home collection was presented in an old Venetian church as a feast for the senses, alongside classic Italian cuisine like pasta and panettone.

“All Italy presents ancestral trades that must be preserved, and we are very proud to bring them to the world now in these type of products, a company that we had already been thinking about for several years,” says Domenico Dolce.

Dolce & Gabbana Casa fits right into the new Sicilian home decor trend. The design house’s Carretto motif, for instance, is drawn from the traditional designs that have been painted onto horse and donkey-drawn carts throughout Sicily for centuries. Sicilian interior design style incorporates these vibrant patterns, rustic materials, lush textures, and weathered accents to give the home a more relaxed, warm, and homey feel that’s rooted in the Southern Italian charm particular to the island of Sicily.

Though Casa might be Dolce & Gabbana’s first official line of their own home goods, it isn’t their first foray into home objects altogether. The design house previously collaborated with fellow Italian heritage brand Smeg to produce a line of kitchen appliances decked out both in their signature motifs and intricate illustrations of Sicily. First released in 2018, that series consisted of refrigerators, toasters, blenders, juicers, ovens, and more.

The post Dolce & Gabbana’s “Casa” Home Decor Collection Celebrates Classic Italian Style first appeared on Dornob.

This is just part of what one can expect from the newest collab from Italian super brands Lamborghini and Zambaiti Parati. This is the second collaborative collection from the iconic pair (the first was released in January 2019), and this time they’ve created newer and even more amazing wallpaper designs that illustrate their teamwork and partnership in the best way possible.

Zambaiti Parati has long been known as a quality, high-end producer of wall coverings that wow, and Automobili Lamborghini’s sleek, fast car aesthetic is instantly recognizable, creating the overall feeling of peak automobile innovation. Who better to create a dynamic collection that’s both classic and modern, with a design aesthetic that, if not instantly recognizable, is at least instantly appealing?

Evoking a feeling of three-dimensionality, and with a depth that echoes the movement of a lightning-fast sports car, this most recent collection has taken the brands’ vision to the next level with stunning optics and warm tones like copper and natural green, in addition to more neutral grays that are anything but dull.

The relationship goes back to 2017, when Zambaiti Parati began their exploration of the distinctive Lamborghini look, drawing inspiration from the brand’s clean lines and uber-dynamic feel. Pairing closely with Lamborghini’s Centro Stile (the brand’s famous in-house design department), that collection successfully married Zambaiti Parati’s attention to detail and flair for immersive, almost tactile, designs with the luxury car manufacturer’s signature look, inspired by materials and even influenced by car parts. Centro Stile even scanned certain pieces to create more visually-impactful effects that saturate the collection, imbibing it with a depth that’s almost surreal. One’s eye is immediately captured and entranced by the sense of movement and texture as the wallpaper seems to breathe with a life of its own.

And this newest collection takes that effect to the next level. The thick wallpaper is solid yet fluid, functional yet luxurious. Its quality is meant to further reflect Lamborghini’s composite parts that focus on inventive, innovative precision with regard to both overall design and materials. This translates into textures that are almost industrial in their feel — fireproof and durable, easy to install and replace, yet delicate and deep, complicated and immersive in their appearance.

While the first collaboration was the backdrop for Automobili Lamborghini’s luxe lounges and prestigous presentations around the world, settings meant to appeal to a diverse clientele accustomed to the car manufacturer’s combination of class and dynamism, the new 2021 collection is aimed to appeal to a broader international market, and is suitable for both commercial and residential use.

With two iconic names that embrace the ethos and vision of “Made in Italy” – a concept that reflects and embodies singular Italian creativity and forward-thinking innovation – the 2021 collaboration from Lamborghini and Zambaiti Parati is a stunning and evocative take on the distinctive look of these iconic brands and their far-reaching, world-famous aesthetics.

The post Sleek New Lamborghini X Zambaiti Parati Collab Actually Makes Wallpaper Cool first appeared on Dornob.

That extends to its interior design style, too. Sicilian decor is the next big thing, bursting with rustic materials, lush textures, and colorful patterns that’ll have you feeling like you’re lounging on a sun-baked terrazza overlooking the sea. Here are four simple tips for incorporating this up-and-coming trend into your home:

Textural Accents

Image: Casa Talia by Vivian Haddad and Marco Giunta

Old, weathered items with lots of character and natural materials like wood and woven seagrass will bring an essential rustic element to your Sicily-inspired decor. If you find a clay jug, copper pot, or antique oil painting at a thrift store that’s a little dinged up, all the better. Items that proudly bear their age and sense of history will keep your freshly updated decor from looking as if you just picked up a bunch of cheap reproductions from a-big box store. If you’re up for a bigger project, you might even consider plastering an accent wall for the look of a real Sicilian grotto home (or achieving a similar effect with all natural, zero-VOC lime paint from Color Atelier).

Warm Tones

Image: Trend Design Book

When it comes to color, don’t be afraid to go bold here. Saturated hues in warm tones like marigold, poppy, umber, and sienna paired with Mediterranean blue invoke the cheerful scenery of Sicilian streets, where vivid murals complement crumbling stone walls, cobblestone pavers, and marble archways. For inspiration, check out Dolce and Gabbana’s “Divina Cucina” collaboration with fellow Italian brand Smeg. Released back in 2017, the collection isn’t available anymore, but it’s a great reference for beautiful color combinations and could even inspire a little hand painting of your own.

Colorful Patterns and Motifs

Image: Giammona House via That’s Taormina

Speaking of murals and hand-painted accents, patterns are a huge component of Sicilian style. One of the most common motifs you see in Sicily is the Triskelion, the three-legged woman that appears on the official flag of the autonomous Sicilian region (as seen above on the facade of Giammona House in Taormina). Suns, citrus fruits, flowers, and Greek-inspired patterns are also popular. One easy way to incorporate traditional Sicilian patterns into your decor is through maiolica ceramic tiles, which are also sometimes translated into textiles. Short of traveling to Sicily in person, Etsy might be the next-best source for maiolica treasures.

Mix and Match Style

Image: Adesso Villa in Sicily by The Thinking Traveller

To modernize your Sicilian-style interiors, just mix in plenty of modern and contemporary elements, and remember to edit carefully. The difference between effortlessly chic and old-fashioned Nonna can come down to a streamlined leather sofa, a backdrop of minimalist white walls, and stripped-down statement lighting like this natural brass Mondrian chandelier featuring hand-blown Murano glass spheres. And resist the urge to fill in every open area to maintain a healthy balance of negative space and interesting focal points.

Main image: Masseria d’Estia Villa via The Thinking Traveller

The post 4 Easy Ways to Infuse Your Home Decor with Sun-Drenched Sicilian Style first appeared on Dornob.