Villa Kiseleff 16 BY DOOI Studio

Along with its story, this project is a gift that the owner en „maître du lieu” offers to the city, to the passer-by and the aesthete. The villa’s exterior design and interior decoration have been an integral and un-dissociated part of the architectural project. I was tempted by a rather poetic writing style, as I was looking to lend the place an instantaneous metaphysical reading key. The interior scrapings have a functional dimension, redesigning a premise with multiple professional functions, adapted to the beneficiary’s needs. At the entrance we are met by sculptor Jacques le Bescond’s couple “Contes et legendes”, while on the interior, in the window facing the inner yard, we find “Clair Obscur” – a sculpture as a Biblical quote, a tribute to the imagination of the free man and his creative force. Upon discussion with the beneficiary, the original gauges were preserved, while the interiors were demolished with great care to the preservation of the overall spirit of the building. The Haiku conference table in the same solid, dark wood accompanies the personal “Nobel” office, also manufactured by Tressera from a dark shaded walnut. Ion Måndrescu’s wheel rises in the center of the inner yard’s pool, while on one of the walls floats the Mexican artist Also Chaparo’s “Enero”, recently exposed at ArtBASEL 2014. Thus, the project and its architecture become synonyms of the transformation and organization of the preexisting mutations, so as to allow for the reading of the building’s historical context, to reveal it and to restore the narration and duration of the site.We particularly worked with the dialectics of mineral/vegetal, old/contemporary, shadow/light, and warmth/cold. In this project we realized that solutions and functions came about in a simple, natural manner, as the owner, sensible and respectful of the space, easily acknowledged the capacity of the preexisting volume, without requiring any useless extensions. The interiors were clad in stone and wood: we used large silver roman travertine tiles, directly originating from the quarries of Via Tiburtina. The owner elegantly complemented the interior design and landscape with works of art and contemporary sculptures seen in galleries in Paris, Miami and New York. In a second favorite space of the villa, we find {tefan Cål]ia with works that seem to descend from medieval miracles and fantastic fairy tale worlds, born out of a magic wand. Thus, the project’s attitude and work pace were permanently redefined by this very elegance and refinement. This villa’s story and execution are simple: a meeting, a life story, a companionship, but not just any kind of companionship. Moreover, Pino Signoreto, a glazing artist, put his signature on two of this project’s works. The garden and park’s existing vegetation was complemented with species of shrubs and acers, refined Japanese bamboos, a particularly silver and slender fir tree, summer gramineus plants and generous rhododendrons, all brought over from the Italian nurseries of Vanucci.