Through The Lens Of Time

Historical palazzo in the center of Napoli restored and transformed into studio and private house. This space is an interesting result of layers of history from different eras, side by side, vintage and modern design, reflecting perfectly the architectural approach of architect Antonio Giuseppe Martiniello. A perfect set-up for continuous within film, fashion, art and design. This is a place where “Mussolini: Son of the Century” a new series from Joe Wright were filmed.

Beyond the enormous neoclassical facade lies the story of a house with a significant past. Memories and testimonies surviving time adorn the inner courtyard, revealing through the coat of arms the chosen place of the noble Ruffo di Castelcicala family. “Nunquam retrorsum.” “Never backward.” Thus reads the motto, which, together with a half rearing horse, overlooks the piperno stairs leading to the noble floor. Clues from this aristocratic past have allowed architect Antonio Giuseppe Martiniello to bring about an authentic spatial revolution consistent with the spirit of the place. We are in Naples, in his home-studio dating back to 1690, renovated in the 1800s, uninhabited for over ninety years and reborn thanks to his intervention.

Today, the house is the headquarters of Keller Architecture, a place where the ever-changing grammar of good architecture must face ever-new challenges. His way of feeling architecture as a phenomenon of change in which the present is correlated with the historical development of the past constantly drives him to transcend his boundaries, leaving a strong mark everywhere. His postgraduate training in Austria, in Graz, played a fundamental role in shaping his conception of space. “I love Naples, I defend my roots, but I feel very European. Naples is a stimulating city, the physical place where years of architectural research are encapsulated. I think my city is still far from the standardization of taste. My studio, like my home, is a place open to cultural exchange, contamination, confrontation. In a city like Naples where everything new is quickly re-elaborated, regenerated, and innovated, it is stimulating to develop a dynamic architectural language. Innovating for me means recovering the historical memory of a place, a house, and projecting it into the future of modernity. Past, present, and future I see as a linear continuum.” All his projects in interior architecture and social regeneration with a sustainable approach move in this direction. Starting from the pilot project that has been affecting the sixteenth-century Monumental Complex of Santa Caterina a Formiello in Porta Capuana since 2011, everything moves in a very specific direction: promoting interaction between artists, designers, and artisans, giving life to an ethical and inclusive production chain. Here is the headquarters of Officina Keller Napoli, an association founded by architect Martiniello, dedicated to urban regeneration and social conversion. The two dimensions, architectural and social, are the fundamental pillars of the activity that the architect has been carrying out for years in the territory. Keller Architecture creates the containers within which Officina Keller Napoli elaborates and develops the contents.

Following his design philosophy, it is clear that cultural heritage cannot be mummified; it must be integrated, regenerated, and related to the lived space. This is what happened in the Chinese room, born from a recent design intervention that highlights the theme of continuity and the relationship between ancient and contemporary. Here the architect’s abstract idea takes on concreteness through graphic representation translated into colour. The residence-studio, in fact, arises from the sum of two rooms, decorated in the nineteenth century with various forming techniques, now ideally unified through a recognizable contemporary sign: an orange thread in fabric. His house embodies this code everywhere; in its space, compositional research and design process merge. The interconnected environments, in their succession, tell like frames of a short film, the scenographies of a revitalized space, where historical memory, design, art, and technology activate exchanges and interactions, blending together.

Each room “screams,” highlighting the differences between ancient and modern presences, enhancing finishes through philological restorations that intentionally tend to mystify contemporary interventions. From the peacock room to the Pompeii red one, from the very recent Chinese room to the library, it is a succession of citations. Each environment is a layered poetic narrative. The wallpaper, deteriorated and detached by time, comes back to life and contaminates; the oriental decorations of the peacock and butterfly room reveal stories and anecdotes of a cultured past. According to the fashion of the time, each room had to have a specific decoration, and what has survived the patina of the years returns the preciousness of ancient nineteenth-century techniques that imitated wood or marble.

What ties all these open and communicating rooms together is art in all its forms. From the works of Harry Pearce “Poetry in THE street of Naples” to those of Rosy Roxy, Salvino Campos, Andrea Anastasio, Ryan Mendoza, Fischerspooner, and Alberto Tadiello. Here, in a highly creative atmosphere, design also explodes. Pieces of industrial production, exquisitely crafted pieces, vintage icons dialogue without one prevailing over the other.

“Then there are inheritances and rarities, those coming from friends’ houses. Unobtainable pieces that breathe here.” In this house, there is everything needed for a live-work always focused on sharing the “making of architecture.”