On Saturday 27 July, Casa Italia Paris 2024 opened its doors at Le Pré Catelan – the venue chosen by CONI to welcome the athletes of the Italy Team and its guests during the XXXIII Olympic Games in Paris scheduled to run until 11 August 2024. The exhibition is conceived as part of an exhibition at the crossroads of art, architecture and design entitled Ensemble.
Art architecture and design are celebrated and orchestrated in an inter-generational and inter-disciplinary interweaving, beyond that which links the event with the shared values between the nations at play, sung through sport.
Ensemble, is precisely the concept behind the Casa Italia Parigi 2024 project, curated by Lorenzo Pellicelli (CONI) and Beatrice Bertini, a new stage in an evolutionary process that over the years has progressively transformed the athletes’ house from Hospitality House to an internationally recognised brand capable of narrating Italian culture and the Country System through its excellences. Ensemble is, therefore, the coherent and most recent landing place of this journey that began in Rio 2016 with Horizontal (the contamination between cultures), continued in PyeongChang 2018 with Prospectum (the Italian point of view in the encounter with different civilisations), then in Tokyo 2020 with Mirabilia (an edition under the banner of Wonder) and further on in Beijing 2022 with Millium (the journey as a metaphor of existential path), and then culminated in Milan Cortina in 2026. Evoking images of harmony and consonance, the concept of Ensemble – a term also linked to music and fashion, two pillars of both French and Italian modern cultural identity – acquires further symbolic value on the occasion of the stage marking the return of the Olympic Games to Europe after twelve years.
The exhibition is marked by the works of 19 leading artists of Italian contemporary art – Vincenzo Agnetti, Marco Bernardi, Giovanni Bonotto, Sergio Breviario, Claire Fontaine, Paolo Delle Monache, Alberto Di Fabio, Agostino Iacurci, Francesco Jodice, Margherita Moscardini, Matteo Nasini, Gabriele Picco, Julie Polidoro, Riccardo Previdi, Edoardo Tresoldi, Marinella Senatore, Stalker, Patrick Tuttofuoco, Fabio Viale – and the creations of 32 internationally renowned designers for 11 companies that constitute the excellence of Italian design. And we find: Francesco Binfaré, Fernando and Humberto Campana, Jacopo Foggini, Masanori Umeda for Edra, Marco Lavit, Patrick Norguet, Marcello Ziliani for Ethimo, Mario Bellini, Piero Lissoni, Patricia Urquiola, Tokujin Yoshioka for Glas Italia, Ron Arad, Tord Boontje, Sebastian Herkner, Marc Thorpe for Moroso, Brodie Neill for Riva 1920 who have been the companies working alongside Casa Italia for several years. They were joined by: Antii Kotilainer and Metrica for Arper, Monica Armani, Mario Bellini, Antonio Citterio, Piero Lissoni, Gaetano Pesce, Patricia Urquiola for B&B Italia, Michael Anastassiades, Achille and Pier Giacomo Castiglioni, Piero Lissoni, Jasper Morrison, Barber & Osgerby, Marcel Wanders for Flos, Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec for Mutina, De Pas – D’Urbino – Lomazzi, Ettore Sottsass, Superstudio for Poltronova, Formafantasma, Nava+Arosio for Rubelli.
The architectural project is based on the link between the new and the existing, between artifice and nature; the first declination of the Ensemble concept is that of interweaving, already inherent in the Olympic Circles. Conceived as a series of rooms within rooms, the House appears as a succession of new rooms installed in the 19th-century architecture of Pré Catelan through the use of a semi-transparent fabric, in a continuous process of reciprocal enhancement that also reverberates in the outdoor spaces.
The artistic itinerary, curated by Beatrice Bertini and Benedetta Acciari, is interspersed with an absolute novelty that Casa Italia has the honour of hosting: the special equipment and accessories worn by the Corazzieri Regiment, a special unit of the Carabinieri Force placed under the authority of the Presidency of the Republic. The magnificence of the uniform on display consists of a cuirass, typical of the heavy cavalry for which soldiers were called corazzieri, a helmet and a sabre.
Every choice in this project has been projected with an ecological perspective as well as a focus on maximising collaboration between companies, craftsmen and the creative intelligence of designers. A good example of a space that welcomes by conveying in an experiential form a visionary project, bearer of interdisciplinarity and interweaving of spaces, symbols, content and life.
(from the press release)
Ensemble a Casa Italia, Paris 2024
Project’s Director: Lorenzo Pellicelli, Marketing CONI | Concept by the CONI marketing department and Beatrice Bertini| Artistic project: curated by Beatrice Bertini and Benedetta Acciari | Scenic design: architecture studio IT’S | Lighting Design: Fabertechnica and Massimo Pascucci | landscaping project: studio Natura and Architettura
images: (cover 1) CASA ITALIA PARIGI, 2024. Edoardo Tresoldi. ph Pietro Savorelli for CONI (2) CASA ITALIA PARIGI, 2024. Stalker. ph Pietro Savorelli for CONI (3) CASA ITALIA PARIGI, 2024. Julie Polidoro – Vincenzo Agnetti. ph Pietro Savorelli for CONI (4) CASA ITALIA PARIGI, 2024. Installation View. ph Pietro Savorelli for CONI (5) CASA ITALIA PARIGI, 2024. Giovanni Bonotto. ph Pietro Savorelli for CONI
