Luxury Home: Back to Nature
Where does an Italian industrialist kick it with friends and family, converse with nature, and court inspiration? In Cortina d’Ampezzo, of course, the small, exclusive, cosmopolitan commune smack dab in the Dolomites—replete with eye-popping Alpine panoramas, a panoply of winter and summer sport possibilities, and shopping and après-ski scenes secondo a nessuno.
But if you’re Pasquale Natuzzi, chairman and chief designer of the Natuzzi Group, the largest furniture company in Italy with 2007 sales of €634.4 million and over 8,000 employees worldwide, it is not so simple. For the son of a cabinetmaker who started his business from scratch in 1959, who made a splash in the early 1980s by introducing the first affordable leather sofa to the U.S. market ($999, distributed through Macy’s), whose firm in 1993 became the first foreign furniture company listed on the New York Stock Exchange (symbol: NTZ), who took his "people’s sofa" to Europe in the 1990s and China after the millennium, and who has earned the sobriquets King of the Couch, Prince of the Pouf, and Kaiser of the Chair, design and its myriad details matter. A lot.
And so with a highly personal and specific aesthetic checklist in mind, Natuzzi and his wife, Antonisa, set out to look at Cortina real estate. Five years later, they found just the place, hardly perfect but rife with possibilities. "It’s complicated to find buildings that combine the typical Cortina style with modern and functional needs," says Natuzzi. "We sought a house that could be restructured and maintain its original integrity." What they chose was a 50-year-old villa close to the town’s historic center yet still in a strikingly bucolic setting, one boasting a postcard-perfect view of the Tofane, three dramatic, rocky peaks—the highest in the valley at 10,640 feet—that end the mountainous ridge and crown Cortina.
Then Natuzzi’s real work began, what he calls a refurbishment and which might be described as a soup-to-nuts renovation or redesign, but which more accurately should be termed a reconception, or in academic prattle, a deconstruction. Not that he was looking to make a design statement discordant with either the village or valley. Quite the contrary, Natuzzi was "fully aware of the importance of local traditions and cultural identity," meaning he was cognizant of the region’s prevalent architectural style—the chalet—which places a premium on natural, self-evident building materials, typically stone and wood, along with a directness of design (a square or rectangular shape, two-and-a-half or three stories, a low-pitched roof and wide eaves extending over verandas and balconies fronted by flat fretwork, "jigsaw" balustrades) that in silhouette brings to mind a kid’s drawing of what’s usually in front of you here: a mountain.
Out of his respect for local architectural integrity, Natuzzi left the exterior largely unaltered. Because of Natuzzi’s desire to live in harmony with nature and what he calls the mountain lifestyle, the exterior was largely left alone. The interiors were another matter. While Natuzzi—who oversaw and coordinated all decisions on architecture and interior decoration—wanted the rooms and floor plan to reflect a Cortina contextuality, he didn’t want "to renounce the simplicity and elegance of a welcoming, warm, and linear home." He wanted, in short, to spin the chalet Natuzzi-style.
His first prescription? Let there be (more) light. Out of the attic he fashioned a master bedroom and bath with picture windows, skylights, and a glass door leading to a balcony, letting sunlight and views of the mountain and landscapes in—a strategy he also employed in the public floor, where large windows and glass doors yield spectacular Tofane sightlines and access to even bigger balconies. Next came an emphasis on an open floor plan, because charming and cozy as a chalet might be, it can also be cramped and claustrophobic. Banished were many of the internal walls on the public floor, creating a large communal space delineated by function: A living area by the windows continues via a long sectional sofa to the fireplace; a large dining area is further refined by a more intimate dining corner when the number of diners is fewer.
The envelope complete, Natuzzi moved to interior materials. Floors, paneling, beams, and ceilings in larch or fir—knotty woods typical of the Ampezzo area—were replaced with dark walnut, which Natuzzi preferred for its color and tone but particularly for its grain. "The pattern," he says, "exalts the Cortina landscape." Except for the fir rafters, which were kept because such large dimensions are possible in pine, walnut is used ubiquitously throughout, in both the structure and for the furniture, everything from the handcrafted boiserie and the dining room table and chairs made by an artisan from Treviso, to the rough-hewn, unvarnished bedside tables in the master bedroom.
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