Francesca Amphitheater, Artistic Director of Jewelery and Watches at Louis Vuitton, is always perfectly groomed, but walking barefoot into a cave and seeing her smiling not the first time. But here we are, on her September afternoon in crisp pinks and golds, on the sparsely populated southwestern tip of a small island (2.8 km x 880 m) called Ventotene. Aside from her Birkenstock 1774, Amfitheatrof pads around caves on the sides of bluffs, delightfully illustrating all its curves, petite, jutting rocks.
Certainly, this is no ordinary cave. The stone ceiling, which arches in uneven semi-arcs over the space, is painted white. Towards the back, it turns into a natural glass-enclosed opening through which diffuse sunlight spills out. Two walls meander wildly along the sides of the space. A built-in lounge his bench wraps around one of them, and a fireplace is mounted on the other side, while the pale pinkish-grey brick interior creates a soft atmosphere. Surrounding it in a semi-circular embrace is a recessed living area. The open kitchen in the center of the cave forms a horseshoe curve, and the countertops are covered with the same cement-colored terrazzo that covers the entire floor. This will give your feet the most comfortable texture. I’m standing in the center of space and he can’t find a single straight corner.
holiday House It’s meant to keep you away from the tedium of everyday prose – and nothing can be further from the hustle and bustle of the professional designer’s life in the 21st century than a cliff cave formed during the Pliocene-Pleistocene epoch. But Amfitheatrof’s cave is completely modern and entirely hers. She has been restoring it for several years and has a keen eye for form and proportion in every nook and cranny of her 150 square meters. She smoothed surfaces, incorporated structure, and layered softness in materials and colors, but only as absolutely necessary. Designed and drawn to by Amfitheatrof himself, like a discreet yet striking jewel, its fundamental nature is enhanced by minimalist interventions. “Not very decorated,” she says.
amphitheater She may not have always envisioned caves as her vacation boltholes, but Ventotene, one of Italy’s Pontine islands (most famous for Ponza, about 25 miles to the northwest), has always been It was on the list of places. she may have it one day. She spent her itinerant adolescent summers with her cousins on the island (her mother was Italian, her American father was a Time magazine bureau chief, and traveled to Japan, Russia, Rome, and London at various times). I was working). Today these cousins own and run the Agave e Ginestra, a charming hotel just below the Amfitheatrof’s forecourt. “There weren’t any hotels back then. For years it was all a very hippie campground situation,” she tells me. I haven’t been here for quite some time, but I brought my husband here about ten years ago. [the investor and entrepreneur Ben Curwin]and we saw this and fell in love with it.
From love at first sight to livable space, it was a technically complex road. “First and foremost, we had to make it geologically sound. So we did a lot of work there,” she said, pointing to the white-painted stone above us. “But the whole island is protected [it is a European Heritage Label site], almost all changes were prohibited. ” To manage this project, she enlisted her Francesca Capitani and Marco Lanzetta from the architectural firm LaCap in Rome. “They have built a few houses in Ponza, but before that there was no cave. But they really understood what I wanted: a clean entrance and It’s a minimal amount of material.”
Working with them was Francesco Mancini. Geometra (structural engineer), and the second architect, Monica Fasano, who facilitated the approval (often the most difficult part of an Italian restoration project). (“But coming from a more Anglo-Saxon culture, I wanted everything to be absolutely on board. Professor ――While actually living on site for several months, you tenaciously turned your ideas into reality.
The team spent the first year or two installing multiple steel H-beams, steel rods and structural nets. “We cut holes in the rock like cheese to create this support device,” she says. A state-of-the-art heating, cooling and ventilation system has also been installed. The natural hole became a skylight with custom electronic window panels and blackout blinds. All of this took place while Amfitheatrof lived and traveled for work in New York and Connecticut (in addition to her role at Louis Vuitton, where she regularly commute to Paris, this year she had a unisex, customizable launched her Pauer, a line of elegant gold and bracelets). Silver) and managed the project via WhatsApp during the pandemic. The result is a “robust place,” warm in the winter, cool in the summer, and surprisingly dry.
It’s also very magical. The three bedrooms are alcoves, each with a raised bedroom. This is an unimaginably chic arrangement of cubicles, where beds are layered with Tessitura Calabrese linens from Puglia and custom-made Lolo his Piana cashmere blankets. Two of his smaller ones belong to the Amfitheatrof children, Niko and Stella May. The master is behind the kitchen. All storage was designed by Tree, a Rome-based woodworker.All-white cabinets and closet doors are covered with the amphitheater’s signature white-on-white circular pattern design Created with glossy varnish.
Almost directly below the skylight is a free-standing cave bathroom, whose walls extend only halfway to the stone ceiling, reflecting uneven curves. Getting this right was the hardest part of imagining the whole project. She showed me inside: the toilet on the left (adorned with Nico’s Lego masterpiece), the shower room on the right, and a light-flooded space in the center with a large washbasin.
The kitchen inside looks more like an entertainment bar. “I didn’t want an indoor kitchen, to be honest, but everyone agreed I needed one in the winter.” Admire its outdoor counterparts that run flat with: a cooktop, barbecue, large sink, and two refrigerators hidden behind curtains made of Loro Piana Boatline twill (actually, cushions and All cotton fabrics are Loro Piana weatherproof). A large oval cement dining table in the garden is also covered with warm terrazzo. The banquette behind it is lined with fancy white and blue cushions and pillows.
Interior and exterior furnishings are very scarce, but the combination of eras, styles and materials gives it a lot of character. “I found this wonderful lady, Ortensia Compansa, in Turin. She sourced some really nice pieces for me from her vintage market there,” she says Amfitheatrof. . Among these is a wicker palm tree floor lamp from the 70s by Mexican artist Mario López Torres. and a set of 1977 sculptural modular table lamps produced by Japanese manufacturer Yamagiwa. Rohé Noordwolde designed vintage wicker and bamboo chairs scattered throughout the garden from Dutch auction website Catawiki. Elsewhere, Amfitheatrof set her sights on her Soho Home – a buttercream-finished side and coffee table (used in both the cave and garden), a craggy Garrett armchair, and a rattan pendant lamp above the kitchen. , a fancy little brass drink. trolley.
In the evening, the trolley heads out onto the front patio where you can sit and admire the handiwork of Rome-based landscape architect Luca Catalano as you explore the garden’s native species of holm oak, low date palms, and a variety of flowering shrubs and shrubs. I admire the grass. She recently told me that Santo won a commission to re-landscape Stefano Island. Santo Stefano is a much smaller Pontine island, 2 km offshore and clearly visible on the horizon. Once a Bourbon fortress with a prison, it is now part of a protected national park. She describes the network of reservoirs built in Ventotene by the Romans 2000 years ago to collect rainwater and the legacy of Giulia Her Maggiore. She raves about the cuisine of her Un Mare di Sapori in the old Roman port and laughs about raiding her cousin’s organic garden at the end of the road. The sun sets towards the rosy sea. No sound other than the wind. Behind us, her cavernous volume beckons. The gemstones are left rough enough, unlike on the island and elsewhere.