LA CABANA

LA CABANA

Interior Design Project curated by VGO

Florence

January 2021

The Cabana is only the first of the projects that Valentina is going to develop with her gallery VGO Associates, whose goal is to give life to new spaces with a soul, animated by sculptural objects, also stimulating creative contaminations, igniting new ideas and opportunities. The cultured quotations and coded messages are many and all refined, but the result is a very warm and intimate space, not at all haughty.

For Valentina it was an exciting challenge to create a unique setting in the 80 square meters available. "I called the house Cabana for its warm colors, which make me feel close to the sunny Tuscan lands with its typical country houses", she said. So many noteworthy details. The apartment is located on the top floor of a concrete building from the 70s, with an iconic entrance in red marble and grit.

Location: "the Cabana is not far from Piazza delle Cure, where a very well-known market takes place in the city every early morning". As for the interior plan, in addition to the distinctly warm color palette, with a mélange of tones stolen from the earth, Valentina wanted to preserve the original elements of the 70s building, such as the marble floor of the entrance and the grooved wooden doors, while reworking the rural tradition of Tuscan peasant farmhouses. And here is the choice of wicker curtains, terracotta surfaces, the frangisole bricks in the kitchen, a carpenter's counter, and so on.

The contrast between different eras and cultures allows a unique personality to emerge: "a city apartment mostly made of concrete, featuring selected pieces of contemporary design, hiding a soft and genuine soul behind the strong and brutalist shapes of its furniture".
Most of the furnishings have been custom designed and tailor-made for the project, with a marked preference for poor materials such as deliberately rough concrete, tadelakt, wood, wicker. Of course there is no shortage of iconic pieces, such as the carpet designed by Germans Ermics for CCTapis, the decorative terrace floor by Cristina Celestino, the abstract sculptures by Antonio di Tommaso, the slate table-work of art specifically created by Bianco Bianchi, the painting by Simon Miller, "which tells us about the myth of Perseus who frees the princess of Ethiopia Andromeda ". 
A true creative factory, whose results are inserted with apparent nonchalance in the various domestic spaces. On the other hand, Valentina is the kind of curator who loves to experiment herself. Passionate about art, with a master's degree in Semiotics (and a professor like Umberto Eco), Valentina has permeated the 80 square meters of her spiritual, cultured, esoteric vision of living. An example above all? Her family of Monsters, a fascinating collection of total black sculptures, created in collaboration with the greatest Apulian masters of ceramics, the Colì Brothers. "My Monsters are inspired by medieval Bestiaries, in a history prior to that of the Renaissance, where ugliness and chaos were part of everyday life, as my professor Umberto Eco explained very well. Over time these frightening creatures have become some sort of talismans, capable of protecting those who owned them".

What Valentina hopes is that her Cabana will soon become a place of reconnection with the craftsmanship and culture of the city. But it is also a space capable of making you feel welcomed. "My Cabana has its own rituals", Valentina proudly emphasizes. "For example, admiring the Duomo in the morning mist from the small kitchen terrace. Reading a book in the dining room, comfortably seated or lying on the leather sofa from the 1970s. Taking a long shower in the bathroom that recalls a Moroccan desert landscape, filling with water a small ceramic bird that, blowing, whistles happily. Have lunch among the cactus on the terrace on a beautiful sunny day. In the evening, meditate in front of the backlit niches of the central library, before going to sleep in the chocolate-colored room".