Danube Views and Ancient Architecture Meet in Budapest Flat

Ramy Fischler Studio prides itself on the diversity of its work. Recent projects include a smart fridge, an Hermès perfume store in New York, a line of self-produced furniture, and Twitter’s office in Paris, where the French firm is based and in the process of implementing a new master plan to harmonize the café and restaurant terraces on the Champs-Elysées. From time to time, the studio accepts the odd residential commission. But as principal Ramy Fischler emphasizes, “If we take one on, it has to allow us a certain amount of creativity to develop something unique.”

Recently, an entrepreneur with interests in Hungary approached Fischler with what was certainly a singular assignment. He had bought five apartments in a new luxury development with sweeping views of Budapest—one for his own use, the others for guests—that he wanted decorated in more or less identical style. Fischler took the bait. “We spent a year on his unit, defining exactly what he wanted,” the designer says of the 3,750-square-foot, three-bedroom floor-through, which has an additional 1,100 square feet of outdoor space. “It wouldn’t have made sense to do something different in the others. The décor fits him like a glove and duplicating it means he can give people the same experience as staying with him, only they have their own space.”

The Apartment Design Reflects Vastu Shastra Principles

The client had another very distinct demand: The design should adhere strictly to the principles of Vastu Shastra, the traditional Indian system of architecture. “It’s used to determine the layout of everything from religious to domestic spaces,” Fischler says, noting that the ethos is “simple and frugal.” One of its precepts is that the center of a home should be an empty space free from obstructions like columns or staircases (a requirement satisfied by the apartment’s mid-floor entry hall). And each area in the house is related to one of the four elements—fire, water, earth, and air—to which distinct design rules and color palettes are attached.

Fischler admits that applying such edicts was not always easy, even given the apartment’s generous proportions. “The ideal locations according to Vastu Shastra for faucets, drainage, the kitchen, and so on were often in total contradiction to what was in place in the rest of the building,” he reports. Among the changes he had to make to his original plans was the position of the beds. “Normally I like to have them facing a window so there’s an equal amount of light on both sides,” he explains. “But that was impossible here because they needed to be turned toward the north.” Since the living area is in an “earth zone,” which requires furniture to be low and grounded, none of the seating could have legs or feet. Hence the custom sofas comprising large cushions perched on travertine-slab bases. And in an adjacent sitting nook with a somewhat Japanese aesthetic, two chairs have bronze arms and upholstered backs but no seats, the idea being that, supported by the frame, you sit directly on the floor.

Natural Materials Create a Tranquil Environment

Fischler’s overall aim was to create not only a tranquil environment decibel-wise but also a visually soothing one. “There’s a sort of sobriety and calm to the whole space,” he says. No doubt the principles of Vastu Shastra contribute to that, but he believes the rigor of the architectural detailing also plays its part. “For me, the framework has to be perfect. When each line is precise, it brings a sense of composure,” he asserts. “That’s always the goal I set myself.”

Inside the Budapest Flat Designed by Ramy Fischler Studio 

ramy fischler studio: frédéric alzeari; florence vlemelinx; xiao ye zhang; estelle tran

light is more: lighting consultant

safa: custom furniture workshop

au gré du verre: custom cocktail tables (living area)

maami home: side table

normann copenhagen: ottomans

rubelli: sofa fabric (LIVING AREA), PANEL FABRIC (SECOND GUEST BEDROOM)

epoca: custom sofas (living area), custom chairs (nook)

lasvit; manooi: custom ceiling fixture (living-dining area)

Gubi: lounge chairs (living area), armchairs (entry, guest bedroom)

Roll & Hill: chandelier (study)

ferm living: glasses, bowl (study), teapot (kitchen)

ligne roset: chairs (study, dining area)

Gaggenau: appli­ances (kitchen)

élitis: panel fabric (main bedroom)

d’argentat: custom nightstands

knoll: desk chair

oluce: table lamp

brossier saderne: custom sconces

Dedar: bed fabric (bedrooms)

holland & sherry: panel fabric (FIRST guest bedroom)

edel carpets: carpet (guest bedrooms)

ramy fischler collection: nightstands

manooi: custom sconces (GUEST bedrooms), custom candelabra (bathroom)

makro: tub (bathroom)

alape: sinks

Dornbracht: tub fittings, sink fittings

j.d. staron: custom rugs

tabu: wood veneer

through zsdrál art pop-up galéria: ceramics

SBGA | Blengini Ghirardelli Collaborates With Valerio Berruti on the Artist’s Live/Work Space in Italy

Valerio Berruti has always wanted to be an artist. Piedmontese by birth, the 45-year-old Italian sculptor-painter is firmly rooted in his profession—when he exhibited at the 53rd Biennale di Venezia in 2009, he was one of the youngest participants—and his homeland. He is also open to experimentation and collaboration, which is revealed in two recent projects. One is at Cracco, the Michelin–star Milanese restaurant owned by famed chef Carlo Cracco. There, in the eatery’s semicircular lunette windows overlooking the city’s thriving Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II arcade, is Credere nella luce, or Believe in the light, three figures of girls, frescoed and backlit, that are not only a message of hope in this pandemic era but also evoke the magical moment of childhood, a constant theme in Berruti’s oeuvre. “This is the first time I used direct light in a work,” he says. “Believe in light and science. This is my invitation.”

Milan happens to be the home base of architect Giuseppe Blengini, cofounder of the firm SBGA | Blengini Ghirardelli and an integral collaborator in the second of Berruti’s recent projects: his home in Alba. The Piedmontese town is where Berruti was born and where he first discovered—and fell in love with—Blengini’s architectural vision, in a shop he designed there that no longer exists. Blengini was invited to dinner at Berruti’s house at the time, a small 18th-century deconsecrated church in nearby Verduno that the artist had converted into his residence and studio. During the evening, Blengini, who’s also passionately Piedmontese, noticed a detail: a window that connected the atelier and the former sacristy. And that—the perfect demarcation, clear but not too much, between intimate space and working space—was the jumping off point for the new home and atelier he would build in Alba for Berruti and his family.

Unique and complex, the resulting 5,000-square-foot structure is the product of four years of close four-handed work, a dialogue made up of flying notes, sketches drawn on restaurant napkins, and phone calls between artist and architect when Blengini traveled around the world to his firm’s other construction sites. “For this project, Valerio was the client and my assistant at the same time,” Blengini recalls smiling. Indeed, Berruti was on-site every day, following the group of local artisans and construction step by step. The 5-acre site itself was chosen for its peaceful and panoramic qualities—vineyards rising toward the house, fields of meadows all around, the hills of Alba stretching into the distance. These aspects dictated the basic lines of the residence, the orientation of its spaces, and the openings to the outside. In fact, its stepped, three-story form “recalls the terraced hills ringing the Piedmont region,” Blengini notes. The roof folds its pitches like origami to create an observatory terrace.

Part of the need for a new home was Berruti’s growing family. “With the birth of our two children, Nina and Zeno, we had to change from the church residence.” (His drawings, paintings, and sculptures, by the way, reproduce images essentially from his everyday life and family affections.) It encompasses three bedrooms and three bathrooms across its three levels and is better separated yet still connected to Berruti’s studio, thanks to Blengini’s thoughtful plan. “My years of training have taught me to dare, not to fear obstacles, and rather find solutions without preconceptions,” the architect says. Berruti adds, “Living and working in contiguous spaces offers great advantages. If I happen to wake up at night pushed by a new idea and the desire to make something happen, going down to my atelier is easy. It also applies to the time I dedicate to my children, since proximity allows me to be with them more easily.”

Materials throughout—local sandstone, concrete, oak—are pure and honest, in step with the natural mediums Berruti employs in his artwork—jute, steel plate, plaster. “With the same cement the mixers produced for the concrete, I created panels to cover the wall that leads from my atelier to our home,” the artist recalls. The large, rectangular panels could be a contemporary art installation themselves. They’re gently illuminated by an asymmetrical skylight, its trapezoidal shape “recalling the geometry of the house,” the architect says, that helps naturally brighten the studio, as it’s partially below-grade. Berruti’s finished and in-progress works are peppered throughout, like Fragments, his site-specific work of 196 reinforced-concrete and fresco tiles that lines the short stairway leading from the studio to the home’s living quarters.

There, the dominant material changes from cast on-site concrete to oak, all of which came from a single batch. It composes the flooring, paneling, and furnishings—the latter, Blengini says, “99 percent of which was designed by Valerio and me.” These include the stools along the kitchen island, the dining area’s oval table and pendant fixtures, the main bathroom’s built-in vanity, and the beds.

It’s all evidence of Berruti’s humanist approach—in his art and his life—that makes him open to new ideas and alliances, whether with chefs, children, or world-class musicians (last year, he and pianist Ludovico Einaudi created The Carousel in Venaria Reale together). A similar alchemy must have occurred when he met Blengini, and what materialized is a courageous architectural work. “It combines taste and needs,” the architect says, “in a decisive way.”

cassina: chairs (dining area)

Doimo: sofa (living area)

elica: hood (kitchen)

carl hansen & søn: chairs (study)

flos: pendant fixtures

Duravit: sink fittings, tub (bathroom)

Gessi: sink

Bianca: bedspread (bedroom)

rubelli: cushions

Otto Studio Takes a Page From Dante’s Poetry for the 25hours Hotel Piazza San Paolino in Florence, Italy

2022 Best of Year Winner for International Chain Hotel

International travel these days is undoubtedly heaven and hell. In the former camp is visiting Italy, particularly Florence. But Interior Design Hall of Fame member Paola Navone embraced both the paradisal and the infernal when she drew on Dante Alighieri’s epic poem, La Divina Commedia, as inspiration for the interiors at 25hours Hotel Piazza San Paolino in the 14th-century poet’s native city. “Every project is its own scenario connected to the place where we build,” she begins. “Every story is built from scratch, every element needed.” The results—a sui generis mix of materials and products, some sourced from far-off locales—all stem from the depths of Navone’s fertile imagination.

The hotel is the first Italian property for 25hours, a hospitality brand based in Hamburg, Germany. Navone met founder Christoph Hoffmann several years ago in Switzerland. “We liked each other, became friends, and stayed in contact,” she discloses. Ecco, the commission for her firm, Otto Studio. It was Hoffmann, she adds, who came up with the poetic concept: “Totally crazy. Here was this German guy who comes to Italy to do The Divine Comedy. I took the challenge and interpreted the idea in a light, charming way so Italians wouldn’t feel aggressive toward it.”

Located near the Santa Maria Novella church and the city’s train station, the 115,700-square-foot hotel, which encircles an open courtyard, comprises two main parts: a renovated three-story building partly dating to medieval times that was long ago a pawn shop run by priests, and a new three-story annex replacing a dilapidated warehouse in the adjacent garden. All architectural interventions, made in collaboration with local firm Genius Loci Architettura, came under the watchful eye of the belle arti department of Italy’s Ministry of Culture. (“We came upon tombs during excavation,” Navone reports.) The hotel’s 171 guest rooms are distributed across both structures, which are connected by an interior corridor and the courtyard.

Knowing Florentines and tourists alike, Navone cleverly planned three entrances—one on the piazza and two on the side street—none opening exclusively to reception. One serves the Companion bar, since what, after all, is the first place guests inquire about upon check-in? Outfitted with custom iron-and-brass tables, crimson tufted-leather upholstery, and dark indigo walls, this moody boîte alludes to the first part of Dante’s poem, Inferno, where drinking was deemed a sin. Not for Navone, who dubs it a “church for alcohol.”

The entrance on the piazza leads to I Golosi—an alimentari, or food hall, that pays homage to Italy’s ubiquitous small grocery markets—its name, which references the sin of gluttony, spelled out large in a wall mosaic. Navone turns that on its heels, too. “I’m giving people the chance not to feel guilty,” she reasons. “Maybe inferno is not as bad as people think.” Especially when it’s filled with the delicious pasta, bread, and wine that are available to eat here or take away. Supplementing the real thing are faux salami and prosciutti—art objects rendered in crochet, fabric, papier-mâché, and painted plaster—that hang among aluminum pots and pans overhead.

Reception provides an even bigger wow factor. Custom vinyl wallcovering behind the desk flaunts a super-enlarged version of the marbled paper that Florentine stationery and bookbinding are famous for. The check-in counter hosts another witty art installation: Sourced throughout Europe by vintage collectibles dealer Davide Mariani, old suitcases have been painted silver-green and arranged in teetering piles to greet arriving guests It suggests the ultimate travel nightmare: a lost-luggage office in hell.

Seemingly alfresco, the adjoining San Paolino res­taurant sits beneath an immense steel-and-glass cupola. Vintage chairs and new ones made of recycled plastic and metal surround custom marble tables, which are in turn surrounded by a profusion of plants, some real, some not. The ersatz greenery, which has sound-absorbing leaves of recycled textiles and polymers, was commissioned from Linda Nieuwstad, a Dutch artist. While the restaurant is a study in daylight, the adjacent lobby bar evokes a dusky blue evening. Polyethylene globes, aglow like azure planets thanks to LEDs, give the lounge its name, Sfere Celesti.

Other amenities in the historic building include the Sala delle Celesti Armonie, aka, the music room. With walls covered in another marbleized super-graphic, backdrop to a portrait gallery of Italian divos and divas, it’s for reading or a game of billiards. Guests loath to miss a a workout can descend to the basement gym or use the ground-floor sauna and loungelike “relax room.” Unable to fill the latter space with real plants, Navone created her own fantastic garden with an effusion of green plastic watering hoses.

There are two types of guest room—Inferno and Paradiso—places Dante separates by an immense divide. No so here. Named after good and bad characters in the poem, they are interspersed freely on all floors. “The idea is you can be naughty in the red rooms,” Navone says with a laugh, noting the charred furniture and custom chandeliers with playing card motifs. (Gambling, another sin.) Paradiso rooms are sweetness and light: Floors are creamy resin; azure accents in rugs and fabrics allude to the heavens; and Alexander Calder-esque mobiles overhead suggest the solar system or, in Dante’s sublime final phrase, “the Love that moves the sun and the other stars.”

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otto studio: cristina pettenuzzo; camilla escobar; domenico diego

genius loci archi­tettura: architect

studio makia: landscape consultant

fulvio baldeschi: lighting consultant

milan ingegneria: structural engineer

stimp: mep

riabitz and partners: woodwork

ediltecno restauri: general contractor

pragotecna: floor tile (companion bar)

creative cables: pendant fixtures (stairway)

santamargherita: custom marble tables (restaurant)

maximum: side chairs

gobbetto: resin floor (paradiso room)

Add tag via side panel:

schoenstaub; seletti: custom rugs

rubelli: chair fabric

gervasoni: chair (paradiso room), stools (food hall)

flaminia lighting: floor lamp (paradiso room), sconces (restroom)

vox populi: pendant fixture (paradiso room, music room)

flos: pendant fixtures (sauna lounge)

sammode studio: pendant fixtures (food hall)

aufschnitt; maison cisson; sissi valassina; steiner & wolinska: artificial salami

Add tag via side panel: floor tile (inferno room)

karman: custom pendant fixtures (inferno room), sconces (inferno room, companion bar)

bacter: sofas (lobby bar, music room)

vicentina marmi: custom sinks (restroom)

mamoli: sink fittings

amura: armchairs (music room)

siru: floor lamps

rogai billardi: billiard table, green pendant fixtures

ingo mauer: sconce (paradiso room)

slide: globe pendant fixtures

la pietra compattata: composite-stone floor tile

vescom: custom wallcovering