9. Casa Blu
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Nanda Vigo, buffet Cronotopo, 1974 - Edition Driade - Aluminum, glass shelves and doors, mirror interior - Courtesy of Gorilla Collection
Nando Vigo, chairs Wright Wright, 1972 - Edition Driade - Chrome plated metal, fabric - Courtesy of Galleria Luisa Delle Piane
© Valérie Sadoun
Nanda Vigo designed six monochrome interiors: Zero House (1959-62), Lo Scarabeo sotto la foglia (1965-68), Casa Museo Remo Brindisi (1967- 71), Casa Blu (1967-72), Casa Gialla (1970) and Casa Nera (1970). This series of interiors openly combines art, architecture and design, and references a pop art sensibility. Presented in the iconic design magazine Domus, Vigo’s interiors soon became a benchmark in Italian interior design of the time. Artworks were included as part of the designs, rather than as added decoration. Art and architecture work in symbiosis to create a living environment, personified and avant-garde.
Like Lo Scarabeo sotto la foglia, Casa Blu plays with perception. In these spaces, light becomes physical when cast onto steel, aluminium, patterned glass, Plexiglas or ceramic. Vigo invented the home as a refuge, fed by the obsessions of those who inhabit it. Casa Blu is the first of a series of houses designed by the architect for wealthy clients in Milan, and named after the colours that are their source of inspiration. The artworks displayed on the walls and the shiny surfaces of the apartment lend coherence to the interior and give the impression that the apartment is part home, part art gallery.
In the reproduction of part of that interior in Klein blue, a number of Nanda Vigo’s iconic design pieces are displayed: the Blok table (1972) made by Acerbis, and the Cronotopo sideboard (1971) and Wright Wright chairs (1972) made by Driade. In addition is a painting done by Vigo in 1968, Figurazione Cronotopica, which evokes the pattern created by the rays of light passing through the glass of these Cronotopos.
View from the courtyard Casa Blu - Nanda Vigo, Trigger of the Space, 1974 - Mirror, neon - Courtesy of Archivio Nanda Vigo, Milan © Valérie Sadoun