News Detail

Villa Fornasetti "La Gatta"

December 06 2014

Marco Badalla, CEO and founder of Property At Lake Como  sells Villa La Gatta in Varenna, a property rich of memories and history beside design.

In 1949, Gigi Fornasetti, brother of the well-known designer Piero Fornasetti, and his wife Selia, fashion stylist whose name is still active in Milan, bought a plot of land on the lake close to Varenna in an area called “LA GATTA” ("The Cat"), so called centre of lake Como.
Gigi Fornasetti, interior designer, was in constant contact with international architects and designers who were his contemporaries
including Acs Gabor a  Hungarian architect (vd.Wikipedia) famous for his design work in the U.S. with Sati Ieoh Ming Pei, Cobb, Castiglioni NY.

Selia and Gigi Fornasetti with their friend Acs Gabor shared creative taste, passion and love of modernity. This happy and special combination led to the design of a unique and fascinating "Water Villa" resulting in the building of  "La Gatta", a name that remains as the signature of the villa.

The idea of ​​building a villa on the lake, bonding the structure with the water created the architectural form of the project: a challenge of designing and building modern rationalist forms combining the latest building technologies with the use of traditional materials and building elements, typical of the lake, such as stone, iron and wood. The foundations are very solid, marble floors in the Venetian style combined with split river stones were created by specialist fitters,
built-in cupboards and cabinets were made ​​of solid wood by acclaimed  carpenters which reflected designs tailored to the house.

The garden contains many varieties of plants typical of the climate of the lake, including sycamores and cypress, birch, magnolia,
hydrangea, grape hyacinths, plumbago, jasmine, geranium, vines of  Canada, cycas, roses and sedum.
Access to the lake is made extremely easy along the wide beach and Lido area fronting a short and charming walkway which leads to the dry
beach and changing cabins.

The pier projecting from the land by the cabins allows a medium size sailing boat to be docked and lifted out of the water.
On the roof of the cabins there is convenient parking for 3 cars, linked to the Villa via a stretch of garden bordered by a row of
beautiful old cypress trees, and equipped for the evening with  efficient lighting on the ground.

The result of the project "Water Villa" has been fully achieved and lives on in La Gatta, giving the impression and all the magical
sensations of floating on the lake, reminiscent of  being on the deck of a cruise ship.

The Villa on the water allows, of course, a privileged relationship with the lake, in aesthetic terms, sport, leisure, and above all in
friendliness.

The villa passed to the three sons of Selia and Gigi Fornasetti, Alessandro, Alessio and Sergio which kept the villa with love. Sergio Fornasetti is an artist that during his life painted many times the villa. Now some of these paintings are included in his book available for sale.

http://www.triennale.org/it/mostre/future/2584-piero-fornasetti-100-anni-di-follia-pratica#.VINmVMF0zDc

http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piero_Fornasetti