Venice is, simply, different. Different from any other city in the world—and different from the idea of Venice that those who don’t live there have formed from watching movies or reading books about it. “For those who live in anonymous cities, who take the car and go to work without meeting anyone, the urban landscape here is completely different. Human contact is continuous in Venice,” says architect Luca Bombassei, who has recently taken up residence in the 15th-century Palazzo Contarini Corfù overlooking the Grand Canal. His apartment on the top floor piano nobile—one of the main “noble” floors used as living quarters by the Venetian aristocracy—sprawls over nearly 6,500 square feet, not an unusual size for a Venetian palazzo. Every inch is flooded with the light that enters on three sides; the home is unique thanks to the swirling mix of the building’s historical identity with Bombassei’s contemporary intervention using functional, site-specific furnishings and art.
Bombassei, who has chosen flexibility as his raison d’être (or his means of survival), has accepted the slow pace imposed by Venice’s narrow streets and waterways. “A 10-minute delay is an anomaly for someone in Milan, but here it’s normal. I’ve found pleasure in slowing down—in losing myself looking at the façades of the buildings, and discovering, finally, the city’s secret of marrying old and new, its modus vivendi,” he explains.
A lack of uniformity and a certain eclecticism are the hallmarks of his residence. Grand doorways, quadrifora windows, and terrazzo floors bear the signature of those who made them nearly 500 years ago and square off against custom metal bookcases that conceal heating units. There are elements of Memphis Group, Gae Aulenti, and Angelo Mangiarotti, and lots of Carlo Scarpa, as well as 1950s ceramic sconces from an old Roman cinema, a painting by Lucio Fontana in the primary bathroom, sculptures by Francesco Vezzoli, and two Baco da setolas by Pino Pascali—a play on words in Italian, it’s a bristle brush in the form of a silkworm. Today, one of the worms is “walking” in the living room, but who knows where it will be or what it will be doing tomorrow, because for Bombassei art is constantly in motion and always changing. “Look closely, and you’ll see there are always nails in my walls—what I have on display at any time varies depending on my mood,” he says.
“I collect art because it gives me energy and I find it stimulating. It’s my benchmark for beauty. So I collect pieces without thinking about where I’ll put them. Nothing here was created or acquired specifically for this house.” Not even the capriccio (an imagined scene) by Canaletto in the living room, which features a fantastical mash-up of architecture from Rome and Venice. “One recognizable Venetian reference is the Marciana Library. But Canaletto, who was perhaps in the middle of an argument with the library, painted a washerwoman hanging her laundry there. It’s a petty vendetta that I find very amusing,” says Bombassei.
As a counterpoint to Canaletto’s landscape is an abstract piece by Nathlie Provosty—a layer of color, completely black, which gives the illusion of three-dimensionality. “Illusion” is a word to which Venice is no stranger—and neither are its inhabitants. “The last major renovation of the house was done in the 1950s by an American woman who bought the building from the Contarini family,” says Bombassei. “The portego [reception hall] was divided by a wall to create two spaces, a dining area and a living room. Working with Venice’s heritage office, I tried to restore everything to its original state, getting rid of superfluous additions and changing the wall fabrics but leaving the 19th-century paneling and bringing to light traces of 16th-century frescoes, former staircases, and 500 years of history, basically. The terrazzo floor is original; it was created before America was even ‘discovered.’ It’s these parameters of time that make you understand what Venice really is.”
On Bombassei’s level, an extra-large portego with abundant windows has created a central, light-filled space, with the various rooms and functions of the home radiating off of it. On the right is the main living area of the home, while the private spaces are on the left, with a series of rooms accessed through the original restored doors.
“The first time I visited the apartment, there was a walled-up door where now you enter one of the rooms,” says Bombassei. “I reopened it to connect it to the other rooms, eliminating the corridor and multiplying the visual axes.” In one of the bathrooms, these axes take advantage of the reflection in the mirrored ceiling to create an inverted image of Venice: You can see the water of the canal by looking up. A true reflection meets a very Venetian illusion.
Translated from Italian by Julia Buckley
This story appears in AD’s December issue. Never miss a story when you subscribe to AD.
