In one of the most secret and peculiar corners of the city, Casa Platform Roma has opened: a small slope leads to the inner courtyard where the elegant fountain by A. Casoni, dating back to 1615, welcomes visitors. This is the first view of Palazzo Orsini Taverna, the ancient 15th-century home of the Orsini and Borgia families, just a few steps from Piazza Navona and Castel Sant’Angelo where Casa Platform Roma is located.
Platform chose to open its new headquarters in Rome with the aim of more easily involving all those architecture or design studios based not only in Rome, but also in Naples or Southern Italy, in its publishing and networking initiatives. Casa Platform is the now well-known and recognisable brand name, synonymous with the network that has grown up around the magazine over the years. First in Milan and now also in Rome, it stands as a true cultural salon where architecture studios, designers, cultural operators, and companies meet and forge relationships.
The renovation project of the flat in which Casa Platform Roma is located inside Palazzo Orsini Taverna was conducted by SET architects, a Rome-based architecture, urban planning and design studio led by Onorato di Manno and Andrea Tanci.
The project has succeeded in bringing back to light the historical nature of the place, which previous uses had partly obscured: over the years the rooms had been used as a warehouse for an art collector and then as a tailor’s atelier for a well-known fashion house. Instead, the SET architects studio initially worked by subtraction to bring back to light elements of great value, such as the very high vaulted ceiling of the main hall originally occupied by a loft which interrupted its development, concealing the architectural quality of the vaulted structure from view. The redevelopment of the rooms has maintained and enhanced the original cementine floor, which creates a wonderful texture in the room now free of structures that stood in the way.
To the antique that resurfaces, SET architects wanted to place contemporary elements in dialogue, playing both a contrasting and accentuating role: clay as a material and natural element combined with the gold of the finishes and furnishings. Even in these design choices in apparent rupture one can recognise the reference to the historicity of the context, which is evoked thanks to elements typical of ancient Rome, such as plaster, precious metals or Pompeian red, reinterpreted in a modern key.
This design ideal culminates in the helicoidal staircase made entirely of metal with a brass finish that distinguishes not only the living room but also the kitchen. The staircase designed to give access to the bedroom placed on the new steel slab, from a purely functional object, becomes a very powerful decorative element capable of acting as a visible fulcrum from the various rooms, always offering a new point of view and a detail of unexpected beauty.
Another element of great power and visual charge is the guest bathroom entirely made of marble mosaic with different shades of red that recall the shades of the original cement floor.
The redevelopment of the rooms has also embraced the small garden at the end of the main hall. The SET architects studio, in collaboration with landscape and garden designer Vittorio Peretto, has created a small outdoor oasis where the presence of wonderful banana trees has been enhanced thanks not only to an accurate lighting design, but also to the use of a dark ash wood floating floor that at the end forms a stairway that recreates a small open-air living room.
The project succeeded in bringing to light hidden historical elements, proposing a contemporary and modern reinterpretation capable of acting as a real architectural enhancement and redevelopment. In addition to the historical soul, the architectural studio has succeeded with this project in translating the essence that Casa Platform represents: a large hall open to dialogue and confrontation regarding and towards an evolving design culture.
Credits:
Project: SET Architects
Ph. OmarGolli
Garden Design: Vittorio Peretto di Hortensia Garden Design
Products: Bolzan (bedroom furniture), Cesar (kitchen), Caleido (bathroom fittings), Duravit (patron bathroom furniture), IB (guest bathroom fittings), Ideal Standard (guest bathroom fittings), Friul Mosaic (mosaic in guest bathroom), Leica (HomeCinema), ListoneGiordano (outdoor flooring), Luceplan (outdoor and hall lighting), Martinelli (hall lighting), Novacolor (clay and wall colours) Pedrali (indoor seating), Steel Group (custom-made floor, spiral staircase, table and furniture in the hall), Unopiù (outdoor upholstery).
