Casa Cor 2018 | Gisele Taranto

Women's Suite in the Casa Cor Design Exhibition 2018 – by Gisele Taranto

Casa Cor is the biggest and most important event of national architecture and decoration in Brazil. CASACOR Rio de Janeiro is the first franchise, outside São Paulo, and was inaugurated in 1991. The version that celebrates the way of living in Rio is a success since and throughout these years, 900 thousand visitors have visited 1,137 decorated environments, created by 614 architects, decorators, interior designers and landscapers (counting only one participation among those who have done so many times). This year, the event occupies the former headquarters of the Monteiro Aranha Group, a property in the Ladeira de Nossa Senhora which has a ten-storey building, a colonial-style house and an open area of 2.5 thousand m².

In partnership with Lider Interiores store, Gisele Taranto Arquitetura signed the Women's Suite in the Couple's Apartment. They share the social and service parts of this apartment, but have chosen to maintain their privacies and individualities in their respective suites. The idea may seem strange or very modern, but royalty, see Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon, already inhabited this way, although the interests were other at the time.

In times of sharing, we developed a co-creation project with a very special team: Vanda Klabin (art curator), Burle Marx Office (landscape architects) and LD Studio (lighting designers).

Concept:

Our concern is not only to present releases and make a beautiful and comfortable space, we also want to think and discuss how the changes in behavior that we are living are influencing our homes. Since this is an installation and there isn't a real client, we took advanced of this historical moment of female empowerment and we idealized this person as a woman who probably lived some relationships before and wisely chose to live in this way to preserve her own space, her history and why not her privacy. She is intelligent, smart, fun, exotic, elegant, and sexy only when she wants.

We took as a starting point for this discussion, the work presented by Google this year in the Milan Design Week - Softwear. The purpose of the exhibition was to question the role that technology will have in our day by day life in the future. Edelkoort introduced this concept in 1998, providing an entirely new way of life. She imagined a future where technology was used in the nesting process and where working from home was part of a typical lifestyle. With the combination of work and leisure, new needs arise in our interiors. The textile has an important role in the tatility. The "touch" becomes very important. Our homes now became "nest house".

This theme was also explored by Elle Decor Italia in 2016 with the exhibition Soft Home during the Milan Design Week. Soft Home presented furniture and design pieces animated by a sophisticated and intuitive technology. While the world is advancing a revolution in our lifestyle, accelerated by such factors as widespread deployment of wireless access, augmented reality, sensory hardware, artificial intelligence, Internet of Things, 3D printing, this exhibition / installation was the result of a reflection on life and the changes that will take place in our homes.

Although the time we spend connected to the Internet receives many criticisms or is considered controversial, we can not ignore that it is indeed a reality. This "time" also helped people to stay in their homes longer.

In Brazil unfortunately we still have to add two more factors nowadays: security and economy crisis.

Therefore we observe through Softwear, Soft Home, security problems or economic crisis that our homes need to adapt to the current changes and make them more comfortable, soft and warm will be our goal. The "nest house", with its affective value, will be our physical, mental and spiritual refuge. It is also important to project the technology in the way that allows it to fit into our lives in a transparent way.

Interior and garden:

Taking into account all these factors, we designed an interior that has space to receive, sleep, dress and take care of. In the outdoor area, the goal was to provide a space to relax, slow down and reconnect with the natural environment.

The furniture selection consisting of a mix of new pieces, some of them from Lider Interiores Store, created by famous young designers to honor consecrated Brazilian designers. In contrast with the new furniture we have original pieces from some of these consecrated designers. The selection of fabrics was carefully chosen in order to provide a cozy touch sensation. Velvets, cottons, pre-washed linens and knitting are part of the decoration. The rugs are comfortable and they gave a warm feeling to the cold materials of the space.

The color palette brought a contrast between black and white, as a base, and used blue, yellow and açaí colors in details. The natural wood comes also to bring warm feeling and it was used in specific points.

The bathroom has an area reserved for toilet, bidet and shower and another one integrated into the bedroom and overlooking the garden with a bathtub and countertop with sink and makeup area.

The lighting of the space is given, especially, by details of indirect light in the plaster, setting up a comfortable ambience using a soft light. Punctual spotlights in pairs on the ceiling highlight important elements of the decoration and brighten the works of art.

Selected art works bring the garden to the inner side of the Suite.

Burle Marx design consolidated a commitment in relation to the landscape in the interior areas of Gisele Taranto: vegetation as part of the "grammar of thinking", to the space environments.

The art works here reaffirm an affective reconstruction of the power of Burle Marx gardens, a true environmental and cultural heritage, to restore and extend the garden into the space, bring the landscape painted in all its excess, like an elegy: they are not flowers, they are paintings.

 The dense tropical vegetation in the entire surroundings external area provides an intimate and cozy garden terrace.

 The sound of the water movement will reinforce this relaxing atmosphere while enhancing the space.

The use of some vegetal groups next to the stone brings to the garden a reference of the rocky coast existing in the carioca landscape.

The gray and neutral floor extends the living space and consists of the award winning national furniture: a table and four low chairs in certified wood, which can take different configurations in space, separated or together, thus reinforcing the concept of "nest house ".

In contrast to the dense green vegetation, the black water mirror and the rock, the landscaping project inserts an artistic piece in the form of a panel bench, which dialogues with the tension between the artisanal and the technological, the baroque and the modern. The bench in ceramic panel was all made with the original pieces designed by Roberto Burle Marx and Haruyoshi Ono, in the late 80's, in a contemporary re-reading of the current landscapers in charge of the Studio. This multicolored piece proposes a counterpoint to the intimate space and the more sober colors of the vegetation, the stone and the mirror of water, referring to the proposal of a modern woman, empowered and owner of its space.