This is an interior project for a newly built private villa in Geneve, Switzerland.
The clients’ formal request was to take care of the finishes, the lighting and furnishing solutions to complete the previous project by a local firm (Favre & Guth architectes).
The real goal was to decline the interior design according to the clients’ enthusiastic passion for contemporary art and their large private collection.
The entire house is developed on about 950 square meters. We found solutions for the ground floor (hall, living area, living room, fumoir, indoor pool, SPA, gym), for the first floor (two master bedrooms with wardrobe and toilet and a further guest room) and for the external space with its stone cladding.
Each intervention is designed to be the expansion and reflection of the private art gallery located in the eastern portion of the house. The rooms are differently conceived to receive one by one Pop art works by famous artists.
Like the inside of a precious box every room is lined with a profusion of precious marbles and exotic woods. Among them it is worth mentioning the wide use of Ceppo di Grè, an ornamental stone extracted in the region of lake Iseo (Lombardy - Italy). For this project the marble element has been left open-pore in some parts to emphasise its material effect and polished in others to obtain smooth and homogeneous surfaces.
Maximum emphasis is achieved in the private gym: the space is entirely lined and wrapped with this limestone almost as if it is dug into a rock.
Other precious stones have been used with similar solutions: Irish Connemara, Calacatta Gold, Giallo Siena and Acquasanta. Particular wood essences, such as Makassar, Amara ebony and Santos rosewood - with different surface tratments- are beautifully combined with the stones.
This sophisticated matching game has its maximum in the two master bedrooms, equal and specular in spaces but different in finishing. The first one is covered in Santos rosewood in a continuous lining solution with the stone parts of Giallo Siena of the toilet and it is different from the second one which is characterized by the elegant combination of ebony Amara and Irish Connemara.
Two particular episodes accompany the whole project:
- a room dedicated to cigars which is characterized by a sophisticated aeration system used for the first time for a private purpose: the elegant fumoir is also embellished by the famous combination of Ceppo-Makassar and a double-sided gas fireplace, facing the large living area.
- a big indoor pool, covered in Absolute Black granite to increase the sense of depth. The Uso Boob downlights by Flos are reflected on the pool of water as if they were stalagmites and stalactites of a large cave.
The final result has rewarded one of the first works outside the national borders of our studio.
