GRAND ILLUSTRATIONS

Architect Luca Bombassei has created a synthesis between ancient and modern, art and life, on a piano nobile of a palazzo on Venice's Grand Canal

- ELENA DALLORSO

Venice is, simply, different. Different from any other city in the world—and different from the idea of Venice that those who don't live there have formed from watching movies or reading books about it. “For those who live in anonymous cities, who take the car and go to work without meeting anyone, the urban landscape here is completely different. Human contact is continuous in Venice,” says architect Luca Bombassei, who has recently taken up residence in the 15th-century Palazzo Contarini Corfù overlooking the Grand Canal. His apartment on the top floor piano nobile—one of the main “noble” floors used as living quarters by the Venetian aristocracy—sprawls over nearly 6,500 square feet, not an unusual size for a Venetian palazzo. Every inch is flooded with the light that enters on three sides; the home is unique thanks to the swirling mix of the building’s historical identity with Bombassei’s contemporary intervention using functional, site-specific furnishings and art.

Bombassei, who has chosen flexibility as his raison d'être (or his means of survival), has accepted the slow pace imposed by Venice’s narrow streets and waterways. “A 10-minute delay is an anomaly for someone in Milan, but here it’s normal. I’ve found pleasure in slowing down—in losing myself looking at the façades of the buildings, and discovering, finally, the city’s secret of marrying old and new, its modus vivendi,” he explains.