Overview
The Murano Residence occupies the piano nobile of a sixteenth-century palazzo on the island of Murano, three minutes by water taxi from Venice. The building had been divided into apartments in the 1970s and had accumulated forty years of unsuitable interventions. The client — a collector of contemporary art and a student of Venetian history — purchased the entire floor with a single intention: to restore its dignity.
The project lasted three years. It required the removal of six partition walls, the replacement of every window, the restoration of two original frescoed ceilings, and the complete replacement of all services. It also required, on several occasions, the intervention of the Venetian Soprintendenza, whose approval was sought and received for every material decision.
Design
The design principle was simple to state and difficult to execute: add as little as possible. The existing fabric — the plaster walls, the terrazzo floors, the beamed ceilings — was treated as the interior. Everything new was made subordinate to everything old.
New elements are distinguished from original fabric by material and detail. New doorframes are steel, not wood. New joinery is dark-stained oak, not painted. New lighting is entirely recessed or linear — no decorative fixtures compete with the frescoed ceilings. The distinction between old and new is always legible, and always respectful.
The Frescoes
The two surviving frescoed ceilings — one in the principal sala, one in the smaller cabinet adjacent — were in poor condition when the project began. A specialist conservator was engaged for the full duration of the project. The restoration work took fourteen months and involved the removal of several layers of overpainting applied during the twentieth century.
What emerged beneath was substantially intact. The frescoes date from approximately 1580 and depict allegorical scenes in the Venetian manner. They are now the central experience of the apartment — everything else in the interior was designed in relation to them.
Materials
Original terrazzo floors were repaired and polished. Where original floors were missing, new terrazzo was poured to match — the same aggregate, the same colour, a slightly different sheen that acknowledges rather than denies the repair.
Walls are lime plaster throughout, tinted to match the original pigmentation. The colour varies subtly from room to room — a system of warm whites and cool greys that responds to the orientation and the quality of light in each space.
Outcome
The Murano Residence was completed in late 2022. It is a private home, not a museum. The client lives in it for four months of the year and reports that the experience of inhabiting a sixteenth-century palazzo, restored with contemporary precision, is unlike anything they have encountered in a lifetime of living in exceptional buildings. We take that as the project's true completion certificate.
Overview
The Murano Residence occupies the piano nobile of a sixteenth-century palazzo on the island of Murano, three minutes by water taxi from Venice. The building had been divided into apartments in the 1970s and had accumulated forty years of unsuitable interventions. The client — a collector of contemporary art and a student of Venetian history — purchased the entire floor with a single intention: to restore its dignity.
The project lasted three years. It required the removal of six partition walls, the replacement of every window, the restoration of two original frescoed ceilings, and the complete replacement of all services. It also required, on several occasions, the intervention of the Venetian Soprintendenza, whose approval was sought and received for every material decision.
Design
The design principle was simple to state and difficult to execute: add as little as possible. The existing fabric — the plaster walls, the terrazzo floors, the beamed ceilings — was treated as the interior. Everything new was made subordinate to everything old.
New elements are distinguished from original fabric by material and detail. New doorframes are steel, not wood. New joinery is dark-stained oak, not painted. New lighting is entirely recessed or linear — no decorative fixtures compete with the frescoed ceilings. The distinction between old and new is always legible, and always respectful.
The Frescoes
The two surviving frescoed ceilings — one in the principal sala, one in the smaller cabinet adjacent — were in poor condition when the project began. A specialist conservator was engaged for the full duration of the project. The restoration work took fourteen months and involved the removal of several layers of overpainting applied during the twentieth century.
What emerged beneath was substantially intact. The frescoes date from approximately 1580 and depict allegorical scenes in the Venetian manner. They are now the central experience of the apartment — everything else in the interior was designed in relation to them.
Materials
Original terrazzo floors were repaired and polished. Where original floors were missing, new terrazzo was poured to match — the same aggregate, the same colour, a slightly different sheen that acknowledges rather than denies the repair.
Walls are lime plaster throughout, tinted to match the original pigmentation. The colour varies subtly from room to room — a system of warm whites and cool greys that responds to the orientation and the quality of light in each space.
Outcome
The Murano Residence was completed in late 2022. It is a private home, not a museum. The client lives in it for four months of the year and reports that the experience of inhabiting a sixteenth-century palazzo, restored with contemporary precision, is unlike anything they have encountered in a lifetime of living in exceptional buildings. We take that as the project's true completion certificate.
type
Interior
Location
Venice, IT
Year
2023