A marble jewel on the Côte d’Azur

In a letter from Bordighera penned to his second wife Alice Hoschedé in 1884, the impressionist painter Claude Monet wrote:”Yesterday I had the great pleasure of seeing Monte Carlo once again; the immense lines of the mountains and the sea are wonderful there and, if we don’t think about the exotic vegetation we find here, Monte Carlo is certainly the most beautiful place anywhere on the coast…”. Near here, between Nice and Monaco, the peninsula of Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat is a paradise of lush vegetation renowned throughout history as a haven of peace and quiet and a popular location for luxury residences. A jewel of the Côte d’Azur, the municipality of Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat consists of a picturesque village of around 2,000 inhabitants along with some 500 villas scattered across the peninsula, most of them highly luxurious and with large gardens planted with an enormous variety of trees. Set among the green, gently rolling hills, one of the more recently built private villas was designed by the Milan-based practice Studio TE. The practice was founded around fifteen years ago by architect Tino Brambilla (born in 1961) and interior designer Enrico Corti (born in 1966), who combined the experience they had acquired working together at several Milanese architecture and design firms. Renowned for their expertise in residential, boutique and hotel projects in Italy and abroad, the Milan-based partners have earned a reputation for their attention to detail and ability to combine modernity and tradition.
For this villa on the Côte d’Azur, Brambilla and Corti created a project with custom-designed functional and decorative elements that combine practicality and aesthetics. Extending over several levels on the hillside above the coast, the elegant building is perfectly integrated into the natural surroundings. Light floods in through the large windows overlooking the sea and is reflected from the large marble-effect tiles used throughout the house, a solution that blurs the distinction between exterior and interior. In particular, the designers opted for the large size Calacatta Oro Venato Lucidato tiles from the I Naturali collection by Laminam. Combining appealing textures with high technical performance, the collection faithfully reproduces the most widely-used natural stone and achieves the same visual appeal without further exhausting what is already a much depleted natural resource. Used on both the exteriors and the interiors, the tiles extend seamlessly over all surfaces in the large open plan living and dining space and in the sleeping area, as well as in the bathrooms and the kitchen. One particularly eye-catching effect is the Book Match pattern, where the veins meet perfectly in the centre like a mirror-image reflection. The result is a domestic space that is in complete harmony with its surroundings, where the aesthetic appeal of the veined surface of natural marble is combined with the exceptional stress resistance of ceramics. The same surfaces with a matt finish are used for the outdoor paving and exterior cladding, guaranteeing an uninterrupted view of the landscape.