An international outlook with an Italian touch

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AN INTERNATIONAL OUTLOOK WITH AN ITALIAN TOUCH

by Marta Bernasconi

An innovative architect who’s also a guardian of the artisanal tradition. Roberto Baciocchi shapes spaces, light, materials and colour with great originality and an intense focus on details

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t’s a status that’s out of reach for most. Only a handful of Italian architects have become internationally sought-after designers. What

lies behind their success? A number of factors – a crucial role is played by finding a language that can draw on and fuse the distinctive values of Italian history and culture, like respect for tradition and an emphasis on the canons of classical aesthetics, combined with a creative impulse that inspires

Above. Interiors of a private home in Arezzo. Right, the architect. He and his staff at the Baciocchi Associati studio are members of an elite group of Italian designers known throughout the world for their daring, innovative style.

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Roberto Baciocchi has designed the interiors of Benetti’s new B.Now 50M. The combination of select materials like polished rosewood helps create airy, light-filled spaces whose design ensures continuity between interior and exterior spaces

experimentation and innovation. Together with

one that doesn’t resemble any other but represents

the staff of his studio, Tuscan architect Roberto

only itself”. Baciocchi’s priority is to design solutions

Baciocchi is a member of this elite group of Italian

that embody the highest quality standards and

designers. His work in architecture, interior design,

reflect a deep meditation on the available spaces.

restoration and designing objects and furnishing

“Every space should be able to communicate, to

complements stands out for its decisive versatility.

stimulate sensations. Old buildings speak and

Although his commissions range from residential

communicate in a very special language, and you

spaces to shops, offices and hotels, there is always

have to bear this in mind and avoid at all costs

an underlying sensibility that reveals the architect’s

unjustified superimpositions that violate any kind of

input, even in very different projects. “My style is

equilibrium, rendering solutions banal and lowering

essentially to make use of and enhance the spaces

quality standards”. Spaces, quality, luxury. These

I am tasked to work on. I listen to the spaces so

constants in the architect’s work are also fundamental

that I can express their character to the full. I pay

elements in top-level yacht design. The architect

great attention to light, the colours of the materials

provided a personal interpretation in the interior

and balances. You have to take all these elements

design of Benetti’s B.Now50 yacht, an especially

into account to create a product with personality,

interesting project for Roberto Baciocchi and his

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collaborators. ”The experience with Benetti was exciting because it forced me to consider the spaces in a totally new way. Yacht interiors are containers inside which you should feel protected, stimulated and moved as you contemplate the constantly changing exterior, creating a never-ending series of new perceptions. In a residential setting the space is stationary, but on board a yacht it’s like being in a cinema. You’re sitting down, but you’re watching scenes that are always changing, surrounded by a reassuring space that I think shouldn’t be treated like a metropolitan space. Luxury, just as it is in other projects, means allowing yourself to research, to try out new solutions and avoid easy applications.

Choosing what’s easy always leads to mediocrity.

What is Roberto Baciocchi working on at the moment? “I’m involved in a variety of projects, from residential design to hospitality and retail, travelling around the world to London, New York and Kazakhstan”. Not forgetting Italy, of course!

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From left: design for the La Perla Aoyama boutique in Tokyo, Prada Foundation Rong Zhai Residence in Shanghai, Roberto Baciocchi, the Sugar Rooms Boutique Hotel in Arezzo

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