COLOURS AND GEOMETRIES IN NATURE
Casa Salvati on Lake Garda
The project, called Casa Salvati and described as “a gem for individualists and design lovers”, conserves the original layout as the 1970s interiors have been preserved thanks to careful restoration work involving only slight changes to the electrical and heating systems.
Casa Salvati is an emblem of architecture as conceived and created by Salvati who, between the 1960s and 1980s, and together with Ambrogio Tresoldi, breathed an innovative style into the Milanese cultural scene and beyond. Salvati and Tresoldi are also exceptional for their use and choice of colour that speak directly to the visual arts. The pair’s signature style in using it as an architectural element is rooted in studies of colour done during the Modern Movement and in Pietro Bottoni’s Cromatismi architettonici.
Casa Salvati is an excellent example of this understanding of architecture as a design of freedom, not simply functional but also immaterial – a fluid and continuous approach between environment and inhabitant, capable of combining geometric shapes and associations of colours yet also blending harmoniously into the landscape.
“When you arrive at Casa Salvati you immediately get an easy-going feeling of being on holiday; it’s the colours and the open-plan design that bring about this feeling,” say the Graus, who had no doubt at all about whether or not to buy the Salvati property as soon as they saw it for the first time.
