'Behind the Project' with Patricia Viel and Maxalto

Just like their esteemed clientele, luxury hotels today present designers with demands for the highest quality and experience of space. Designers up for the challenge, will soon find out that this context holds some contradictions too. Guests are searching for meaningful new experiences in spaces that allow them to escape the everyday. Yet at the same time, they also seek the ultimate reassurance of home which feels safe and familiar. “It is a combination between the need to be seen and see, in contrast with a sense of privacy and residential comfort,” explains Patricia Viel, renowned Italian architect, who designed the architecture and interiors of the renowned Bulgari Hotel Milano, an urban oasis loved by international visitors and locals alike.

Her interior concept for the hotel mastered these contradictions seamlessly with Maxalto . Designed and creatively led by Antonio Citterio , the furniture collection’s concept establishes a ‘modern classic interior atmosphere’ by offering a range of products available in complementary scales and finishes from sofas and armchairs, to tables, beds and storage systems. Each distinct product balances a vision worthy of Jean-Michel Frank, meeting the expectations of any design-lover seeking a new experience, with a rigour, inspired by the likes of Le Corbusier and Mies van der Rohe, bringing reassurance and calm. It is through this balance that Maxalto transcends contradictions; it offers technical and stylistic qualities, both contemporary and heritage perspectives, while meeting both expressive and formal expectations.

This skill of transcendence is also one that Viel must embody as an architect at the helm of one of Italy’s largest architecture and interior practice ACPV, which she founded with Antonio Citterio in 2000. Viel works internationally across many scales of projects – from masterplans to private homes, in collaboration with a network of design professionals across disciplines. She must sensitively combine the visions of architecture, product design and interior design together into one sophisticated and harmonised outcome – “blurring the boundaries” as she describes it, to reach a holistic concept.

Her architectural vision for the Bulgari Hotel held the same values of refinement, lightness and attention to detail as B&B Italia group’s Maxalto collection. The hotel’s white marble façade is partially restored from the 18th century, and a lush garden and wall of vegetation welcomes guests. Black granite and Burmese teak wood surfaces ground the public areas, while intimacy is evoked through the detailed approach to materiality in every aspect from door handles to desk accessories.

After the architectural concept is in place, Viel seeks an interior that can fulfil the vision of the space: “We are architects, and we imagine the scene of a space being capable to maintain the strong identity of the architecture, then when you come in with objects that are very coherent to each other, very consistent, but capable of serving the scene, it’s fantastic,” says Viel, which is why she works with Maxalto, a collection that takes this responsibility very seriously.

Maxalto’s crafted catalogue of modern ‘neo-classics’ presented Viel the ideal palette with which to build and tailor the interiors of Bulgari Hotel to suit the architecture she designed. To pick out a few highlights, Viel chose the Kalos armchair as a modern interpretation of the more classic easy chair with a sweeping curved profile and solid wood feet. This was balanced with the more compact, yet equally as generous, Imprimatur armchair with its rigorous volumes and painted steel edge. The elegant and flexible Leukon lamps forged a soft atmosphere, while the Alcova ’09 canopy bed brought structure to space.

While continually updated each year with edits and updates that reflect new technology and changing lifestyles, the Maxalto brand always stays true to its original concept of defining a classic and consistent interior atmosphere. It takes pride in being a collection that can provide durable appeal for designers working for industries such as hospitality, where demands are high and quality, consistency is paramount and life is lived out to the fullest. “Maxalto is more about the organisation of a scene that is expecting something to happen inside. Every single object is under control, exactly like a movie scene,” says Viel.

© Architonic