A Villa with the Right Address

Just a half-mile down the Piazzale Fraccon from the Villa Rotonda in Vicenza, Italy lies another estate, designed and built by a Palladio disciple in the late 1600s.

But the Villa alle Scalette is a little livelier than its predecessor.

Its name is derived from the Scalette Arch, designed by Palladio himself. It was built after his death, in 1595, and stands at the base of a hill.  Below the arch, its small steps, or scalette, lead up to the villa proper.

Today it’s the headquarters for Trend Group, the house of mosaics owned and operated by Federica Bisazza and her husband, CEO Andrea Di Giuseppe. The company bought the 10,000 square-foot villa in 2004 and spent a year and a half renovating it, officially opening for business in 2005.

“We called two architects, each with different training and background,” Federica said. “One, Veller, was a student of Carlo Scarpa. The other, Alessandro Mendini, is a designer with a deep sense of color.”

The company, with sales of $100 million euros annually, specializes in mosaics made from tiles of glass, gold, quartz and granite. They’re used in residential applications for kitchens, baths and pools, and in public spaces like theaters, cruise lines and hotels. “Our clients are mostly women, because they’re most likely to choose these products, and our target is the architect,” she said.

The villa and its surrounding property serves not just as company headquarters, but as backdrop for special events aimed at the architecture and design community. “We try to see this as more than a simple place of work,” she said. “It’s not so big, and not so small either. There’s a space downstairs for a theater that seats 200 people – and then there are the gardens.”

A special event for fashion label Missoni led to mosaics applied to a number of oversized vases, each tailored to the desires of the client. “They asked us to create something special,” she said. “They sent us the original pattern from their collection, and we created it from our mosaic software, just exactly as they wanted it. We scanned it, and the software converted it from our mosaic palette of 150 colors.”

Another event for a group of artists known as Cracking Art, famous for using animal shapes made from recycled materials, was celebrated with a huge inflatable dolphin flying overhead, and  faux dogs, pigs, bears and penguins parading through the gardens. “It was an affinity for us both – they use recycled paper and plastics, and we use recycled glass,’ Federica said. “They provided us the shapes, and we converted them to animals.”

If Palladio provides an introduction to the villa with his arch at its base, he offers a crowning vista as well.  When the season is right and the leaves have dropped from the trees, Federica and her husband can slip away to its top floor and look a half-mile up the hill to gaze quietly on Palladio’s masterpiece.

“Yes,” she said. “We can admire that wonderful villa every day.”

For more on Trend International, go to www.trend-vi.com/