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“We want visitors to Italy to move away from common routes,” declares Milanese curator Federica Sala, “and once again explore the unknown.” Sala is discussing her latest venture, the Italian Villages Project, a collaboration between Airbnb and the Italian Ministry of Cultural Heritage. Now in its second year, the project pairs young Italian designers and artists, curated by Sala, with rural towns in need of an economic influx: The results are sharply designed holiday homes available for the public to book on Airbnb. “The idea is to use tourism to bring a contemporary value to places often perceived as stuck in history,” explains Sala. “It was very important for Airbnb to value places outside of the well known artistic Italian towns such as Venice, Florence, and Rome.”
In 2017, Milan’s DWA Design Studio envisioned an apartment in the Lazio region’s Civita di Bagnoregio; this year, the project expands with two new dwellings in Sambuca di Sicilia and Lavenone, both designed by Eligo Studio, who are also based in Milan. Founded in 2011 by interior architects and product designers Alberto Nespoli and Domenico Rocca, Eligo Studio approached the design starting from a collaboration with two artists, Edoardo Piermattei, a painter and sculptor, and Olimpia Zagnoli, an illustrator, both of whom created site-specific works in each apartment. “We then turned to the local techniques and original architectural details,” they recount of their process, “twisting and reinventing them into a contemporary style.”
Set in the Southern Italian town of Sambuca di Sicilia, broadly considered among Italy’s most beautiful villages, the first house, Casa Panitteri, lives within the walls of the city’s 17th-century Archaeological Museum, once a residence for the local clergy. It holds a prime location in an architectural layer cake of a town, awash with Greek and Arabic influences from the ebb and flow of settlement over the past thousand years. Within the apartment, these elements of the past were left on display—original marble floors, wrought iron detailing, and ancient amphorae (decorative vessels)—complementing Eligo Studio and artist Edoardo Piermattei’s contemporary flourishes. Piermattei, who works with foams, concrete elements, and colored pigments, created a three-dimensional fresco that spreads across the historic apartment’s vaulted ceilings, as well as within the canopy of a four-poster bed, in shades of yellows, blues, and whites. “[Casa Panitteri is] a dialogue with local materials and colors,” explains Sala. “There’s a total fusion in between the artwork and the design project.”
Due north, in the mountainous northern edges of the Lombardy region, is the second home, Casa Maer. Here, Eligo Studio has made good use of the region’s typical stone architecture, covering the vaulted ceilings with welcoming shades of yellow, pink, and sage. The duo installed pyramid-shaped custom wooden frames in the irregularly shaped bedroom and dining areas, allowing for seating and storage areas in the otherwise tough-to-fit curved walls. “The wooden furniture with geometric shapes,” the duo explains, “can be moved if necessary, making the spaces flexible and multifunctional.” Illustrator Olimpia Zagnoli’s colorful contribution—a series of murals depicting happily bouncing frogs and one would-be captor—was inspired by the region’s annual frog migration. Sala and Eligo Studio worked mainly with Italian suppliers for each project: Bitossi ceramics, vintage-inspired Smeg kitchen appliances, Society Limonata textiles, Foscarini lamps, and cc-tapis and Karpeta rugs, plus seating by Mario Milana as well as Eligo Studio themselves.
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“We wanted to show that people live here, that you can have great experiences and give the city the possibility of an economic revenue,” says Sala. For each rental, Airbnb waives the commission and feeds the proceeds directly back into the community, funding much-needed initiatives within these small towns. “It’s beauty,” she continues, “that creates beauty.”
