Casa CaFi is an residence in Alcamo, Italy, the place Girolamo Maria Settipani frames a lifetime of amassing inside a spare, tactile inside. Designed in 2026, the house brings Mario Botta armchairs, Philippe Starck seating, artworks, lamps, and handmade ceramics into dialog with wooden, terracotta, glass, metallic, and grey surfaces, permitting objects gathered—and typically repaired—over a long time to hold the narrative ahead.
About Casa CaFi
Casa CaFi treats the inside not as a clear break with the previous, however as a framework for maintaining it lively. Within the Alcamo residence, Girolamo Maria Settipani establishes a restrained, tactile setting for objects gathered over a long time. The result’s much less a show of design than a house wherein use, reminiscence, and craftsmanship stay intently linked.
A Assortment with a Private Historical past
The residence’s contents hint the proprietor’s lengthy engagement with design. Drawn to the sector since childhood, she opened a store dedicated to world handicrafts within the Nineteen Eighties. Items retained from that have and the years that adopted now inhabit the house alongside Mario Botta armchairs, sculptures, posters, work, lamps, and ceramics she makes herself. Their significance rests not solely in authorship or origin, but in addition of their connection to a selected interval, encounter, or act of constructing.
Settipani’s inside offers these diverse objects room with out stripping away their individuality. Up to date restraint gives a typical floor for work spanning totally different a long time and disciplines, whereas the non-public nature of the gathering prevents the residence from studying as a proper survey of design.
Restore as a Type of Continuity
The clearest instance is Philippe Starck’s Café Chair. After the unique seats wore out, the chairs acquired a minimalist rope weave primarily based on a method the proprietor realized on the Zingaro Nature Reserve. Her husband’s care in repairing broken objects additionally informs the intervention. Relatively than returning the chairs to an authentic situation, the brand new seats add one other stage to their historical past, becoming a member of recognizable industrial design with a hand-worked answer.
This method locations upkeep and adaptation throughout the residence’s broader story. Objects stay in use as a result of they’ll change, and their alterations grow to be a part of what offers them which means.
Heat Supplies, Clear Contrasts
The palette units wooden and terracotta in opposition to grey, glass, metallic, and the whiteness of pure gentle. Heat tones lend cohesion to the collected items, whereas cooler surfaces maintain the setting direct and up to date. The stability is crucial relatively than austere, permitting tactile supplies and private objects to register with out extra.
Casa CaFi finally presents design as one thing accrued, used, repaired, and made by hand. Its character comes from the exact place every object holds throughout the proprietor’s life.
Pictures by Carlo Oriente
Go to Girolamo Maria Settipani
– by Matt Watts
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