Il Sereno – a luxury hotel on Lake Como’s eastern shore – has announced details of a new Penthouse Suite designed by Spanish architect Patricia Urquiola and hotelier Luis Contreras, launching in June this year.
Housed in a building adjacent to the hotel, the suite is inspired by post-war Italian glamour, ‘La Dolce Vita’ and modernist designers, as well as Como silks – for which the region is famous – and the local landscape.
Accessed by a separate elevator, the suite comprises 150m2 of living space, a 30m2 terrace and a 50m2 grass garden around the perimeter. It will be split into a living room, dining space, two bathrooms and a main bedroom sleeping up to four, while floor-to-ceiling windows will provide views of the lake from all angles.
The choice of furniture is a tribute to the emblematic pieces of Italian design, the tradition of their production and the architecture of the post-war years. The mixture will include new bespoke pieces by Patricia Urquiola, as well as her Lariana bathtub for Agape and the Ludo lounge chair for Capellini. Urquiola’s works will be combined with classics from the likes of Franco Albini and Gio Ponti, with all furniture available for sale.
Like Il Sereno, the design will feature a strong sense of place and use natural materials from the region. For Urquiola, it was particularly important that everything was locally sourced. As such, the Penthouse will showcase Canaletto walnut ceilings, Verde Alpi stone walls and Ceppo di Gre stone floors, which will be incorporated in an innovative way: Venetian terrazzo floors will be combined with geometric Ceppo tiles for a new yet classic look. The bedroom wall is also made of Ceppo, specially grooved to provide additional texture, while Verdi Alpi stone has been chosen to cover the living room wall and continues the rich green theme.
With Como being the first place in the Western world where silks were woven – after Marco Polo brought them over from China – and still the world’s centre for high-end production, the fabric is fittingly celebrated within the design. Urquiola-designed silks are already used for the uniforms in existing hotels and here, additional patterns have been added to produce decorative cushions, foulards and other products on sale to residents. Fabrics take inspiration from 1950s scarf fashion and the landscape motifs of Lake Como.
Elsewhere, French botanist Patrick Blanc is adding a vertical garden to the new façade below the suite. After executing three pieces in the existing hotel – Le Canyon, Les Racines Echasses and Le Mirroir du Lac – Blanc will design a living wall that interacts with the façade of the building and the neighbouring Mirroir du Lac.
The brand ethos of Sereno Hotels is always to amplify the surroundings its hotels are situated in. Here, an important design aspect is the framing of the panoramic views on all sides of the suite, the atmosphere of life on the lake and the omnipresent relationship with the lake in front and the mountain behind the property.
“It’s hard to put into words how excited we are to finalise the new Penthouse as it has been five years in the making,” says Contreras on the suite. “It’s always a fun challenge when you want to outdo yourself. We are very happy with the outcome, the balance of the paradoxical elements of simplicity of concept and opulence in execution – this is something that is at the core of the Sereno Hotels brand and at its maximum expression here. It has been a very challenging time with Covid-19, but we can’t wait to host guests this summer.”
Contreras managed to purchase the land while construction of the existing hotel was taking place and it took some years to obtain permits and finalise the design. Paradoxically, it was the Covid-19 pandemic and forced hotel closure that expedited the project. The plan was to build only during winter, when the property is closed so as not to bother the guests, meaning it would have taken many more years to complete.
