Private Palace, Naples

Architect: Giuliano A. Dell'Uva - Photo Credits: Nathalie Krag/Living Inside - Production: Tami Christiansen

In Naples, architect Giuliano Dell'Uva reinterprets an interior dating back to the 19th century. The notion of belonging to the place plays a fundamental role in this project, which tells the story of a family and their eclectic building in the Liberty street, in the Chiaia district. The architecture, dating back to the late 1800s collects more than one hundred and thirty years of artefacts and memories, which now coexist with pieces from the 60s and 70s, such as Paulin, Mangiarotti, Sottsass and Albini. In these spaces, architect Giuliano Dell'Uva inserts contemporaneity through theatrical scenography and material variations. “Each of my interventions is clearly different from the existing context in terms of shape, materials and colours. I update, I lighten, I exalt, without trespassing into a false history. I was categorical, I painted half the space, including the furnishings; in the lower part. the past has remained intact, while above, the present bursts with colour” explains the architect. In this design, he chose to make a formal living room deliberately anachronistic, mixing antiques and memories, heavy carved furniture, delicate and at times chipped porcelain, severe portraits in golden frames, yet “updated by the camouflaging game of the vintage sofa upholstered with the same marbled fabric used in the wallpaper”. It is the moiré libre “Amoir Fou” in “Turchese”, “in a shade similar to Pozzuoli blue which, as Vitruvius writes, was produced with the fine sand of the promenade and with oriental berries”, the architect explains.