Situated near Monza, just outside of Milan, stands a powerful and lasting symbol of a historic design nexus. Villa Borsani is the 800sqm creation of entrepreneur, designer and architect
Osvaldo Borsani.
Completed in 1945 the villa stands alongside the slightly tighter language of Portaluppi’s Villa Necchi as one of Milan’s great homes and a profound gesture of Italian taste and aesthetic obsession.
In February this year our longtime collaborator and friend James Harvey-Kelly shot Mark van der Loo and Viktorija Bauzyte around Villa Borsani yielding a sensual exposé of our finest autumn-winter craft.
Viva Italia.
In the 40’s Borsani courageously departed from his father’s classical furniture design business to start a modernist furnishings designer called Tecno. His home, the villa itself, was a masterful rationalising of the waning art-deco movement, funnelling some of Italy’s best artists and designers into a more rarefied mid-century purity and yet, in the great Italian aesthetic spirit, the result was far from strict.
With contributions from the likes of Lucio Fontana, Gio Ponti, Bruno Munari, Adriano Spilimbergo, Ugo Mulas, Fausto Melotti, Arnaldo Pomodoro and Agenore Fabbri, the villa was a glorious synthesis of the preeminent minds in Italian creativity.
From doorknob to fireplace to ceramic tile or
frieze, no aspect was left to whim.
