Villa
Nara Mondadori was designed and constructed by architect Oscar Niemeyer
on Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat in 1968, a Modernist anomaly amidst Belle
Époque mansions peppered up and down the Côte d’Azur. But it no less
signifies a taste for luxury by the monied set than does its
extroverted, elaborate and highly stylized neighboring pink and ocher
manses.
This
is not your aggressive or rigid Modernist villa of right angles,
soaring vertical volumes and steely surfaces. Niemeyer’s brand of modern
was organic. Here undulating walls of expansive glass and an amorphous,
amoebic-like roofline curves in and out of a tropical setting more
reminiscent of the architect’s home country, Brazil, than the Côte
d’Azur. The property sat unoccupied for about a decade before an
anonymous couple purchased it in the 1990′s for its unusual and special
atmosphere and wide open, flowing spaces. To restore and modify its
interiors they brought in architect and interior designer Peter Marino
to infuse the villa with his own brand of understated luxe. “It’s the
perfect end-of-the-nineteen-nineties statement – it’s all that’s been
modern in the twentieth-century, starting with the Wiener Werkstätte,
with Eileen Gray, Charlotte Perriand, Eugène Printz. We collected
everything for the house … we got twenties, we got thirties, we got
forties. Giacometti from the fifties – all the Moderns” said Marino.
Links de interés:
- http://theartoftheroom.com/2013/09/riviera-style-villa-nara-mondadori/
- http://casavogue.globo.com/Arquitetura/noticia/2012/12/casas-de-oscar-niemeyer.html
