I’m fortunate enough to be the CEO of a company—Fabrica—with an incredible space. It’s drop-dead gorgeous, it really is. And that’s the problem.
It’s a 17th century villa in the north Italian countryside near Treviso, surrounded by vineyards, farms and light industrial buildings, and framed by the snow-capped Dolomites about 20 minutes to the north.
As if that weren’t enough, the 17th century villa has been carefully and ingeniously renovated by the renowned Japanese architect Tadao Ando.
And as if that weren’t enough, Ando then extended the complex with an extraordinary, largely underground building, with a variety of studio spaces, agora, cinema, photo studio, workshops, music studios, auditorium, and astonishing Guggenheim-esque library and so on. This is delivered in Ando’s famed polished concrete, augmented by wooden and gun metal detailing and componentry, in an idiosyncratic and beguiling melange of minimalism, modernism and postmodernism, heavily referencing the local Palladian classical style and the more workmanlike, though somewhat perfect, buildings of the original villa.
It’s completely amazing—have I made that clear yet? I daren’t even upload many pictures, as it might just break the internet through its sheer brazen beauty. And as you walk through the entrance every morning, after a breezy “Ciao!” at the portineria and…
