Discreet and reserved in life, gently determined in his profession, Andrea Auletta recounts the many accelerations of his heartbeat with a smiling sobriety. From the stormy period of his studies and his abandonment of the Polytechnic, to sudden changes of direction and choices that went against the grain: a mix of experiences in just a few years accompanied by a series of sliding doors that he passed through with courage and awareness. What is striking about Andrea Auletta is the simplicity with which he recounts even clearly complex matters, and his desire to build a bubble that encompasses technique, creativity, freedom of thought, and romanticism.
Project for Casa Argentaurum, Andrea Branzi, 1996
You studied under Andrea Branzi, who is primarily a product designer, but you are primarily a hotel designer: what led you to take this direction?
I studied architecture, one year in Venice and one year in Milan, but I felt constrained by the environment and the course. Architecture was very different then compared to today, so I started looking around for other educational options, such as IED and Domus Academy. One day, I told my father that I wanted to change and suggested IED.
My father was a lawyer, and for him, a degree was an essential goal. At the time, IED was a revolutionary institution. This was in the early 1990s, but he supported me. It was a powerful experience, very different from how it is now. The course lasted four years, and the school was full of foreigners from Chile, Japan, the US, and Colombia. The program was rich and much more exciting than at the Polytechnic. At a certain point, a friend of my father’s showed up and told him he wanted to introduce me to Andrea Branzi. I went to see Branzi. I was 22 years old. I remember wearing a suit and tie. He welcomed me into his studio, and we had a chat. I started the internship and he told me two things: “You can call me by my first name and don’t come dressed like that anymore.” Then he gave me a sketch that I couldn’t understand at the time and asked me to make him a model. I looked at this sheet of paper, turning it over and over, wondering what it was. It was a chaise longue. I did the drawing first and then made the model. “No, make the model first because it has to grow in your hands so you understand the proportions.” That’s where it all started.
Suite, Hotel Gabrielli, Venice
Andrea’s was a family studio, like my current small one. There was his wife, one of his daughters, and the guys I worked with. It was a workshop, an incredible thing. They had also set up the Italian design exhibition at the Triennale in 1995: I had made the model of the chaise longue working day and night, we photographed it, the chaise longue was made as a unique piece, the vernissage was in an art gallery in Milan, and the photo I saw on display was not that of the physical object, but that of my model. It was an intense experience; I worked with him for two and a half years. Today, the commercial and economic aspects obviously prevail. Even then, economics were important, but there was something much stronger at the core that was clearly felt and very beautiful.
Then something happened…
Yes, it so happened that a friend of my father’s—my story is full of these kinds of things—was the owner of Star Hotel. He invited me to attend a few meetings, to hear what was being said and breathe a different air. In the meantime, I was working and studying; it was my last two years at IED. I went to the meeting, then I went back once a week, which quickly became three times a week. I went from pure creativity to pure rationality, the opposite. It was my first experience with an environment full of rules: at the time, Star Hotels had Jolly Hotel as its model, with the same room replicated everywhere. I wondered what I was doing there. In 2001, his daughter Elisabetta arrived.
Suite, Hotel Gabrielli, Venice
She came from New York with a different vision and wanted to change everything. I, who had ‘Branzi inside me’, was immediately attracted. She told me, ‘We are redesigning a hotel in Bologna in front of the station’. It was a four-star business hotel, and I had to transform it completely, especially the common areas. At night, I woke up with the idea for the bar, this particular bar that is still there, this bar connected to a large table, like a modern refectory. The next morning, I talked to Elisabetta about it, and she was enthusiastic. And from there, a new story began.
Lounge, Hotel Imperiale, Rome
You started talking about sustainability in unsuspecting times.
Sustainability can mean many things. In 2011, I created the Eco Hotel in Milan, which was the first sustainable hotel. It is still in operation and is exactly as I designed it.
Sustainability in the hotel industry is complicated: a hotel is omnivorous, it is open 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, it must provide comfort to its guests, and it consumes without pause.
You have to accept some compromises, but every time you have to do something in the direction of green: I remember at the Eco Hotel there was also a food bank and we had designed a system to recover the soapy water we used for rinsing catheters. The difference is made by the entrepreneur, however; the designer can only go so far. But a small thing multiplied by 24 hours and 365 days begins to be no longer small.
Suite Deluxe, Hotel Imperiale, Rome
The latest addition is the Gabrielli in Venice.
We opened it on August 25. It was the longest project I have ever done, taking four years between design and completion. We recovered almost 700 Murano wall lights and chandeliers that decorated the old Gabrielli, had them restored, and repositioned them in a different way. For me, this represented a link with what had existed before, and there is a sense of sustainability: if I can, I don’t throw things away, I recover them. Then wonderful things happen: it’s the end of August, the Gabrielli has just opened, and I receive an email from a foreign lady who lives in Venice. I thought it was a complaint or criticism, but instead the email read as follows “I am a lady who lives around here and walks her dogs around the hotel. For years, I have seen the chandeliers and antique furniture being taken out of the hotel to make way for the renovation work, then I see the chandeliers and antique furniture coming back and rekindling this place that was gray and dark, to which you have given new life. This is priceless.
Suite, Hotel Columbus, Firenze
Your projects are ambitious, but is there room in your heart for a simple, affordable hospitality project, still in the “Auletta style”?
Many years ago, Elisabetta Fabbri and I talked about the possibility of creating a chain of three-star hotels, but three-star hotels that were interesting and contemporary. I really believe in this, because hospitality has boomed today, and for me, hospitality is the fashion in design. We experiment as fashion experiments, we experiment, and then many people who go to hotels say, “What a great idea, I want it in my home too.”
Four- and five-star hotels have become difficult to access from an economic point of view. A democratic, well-designed three-star hotel that is low-maintenance and therefore sustainable from an economic point of view. All you need is a small corner for breakfast, but with comfortable rooms and a mood that goes beyond the concept of student accommodation, which for me is still another planet. I think it’s a great project. We need to find an entrepreneur who shares this vision.
Suite, Hotel Columbus, Firenze
Is there a project you’ve seen that you would have liked to do yourself?
No, but I have a project in my heart that I would like to do, but I don’t know if this dream will come true. Some time ago, some of my clients took me to visit a property here in Milan that used to be a school, but is no longer. It was my school, my kindergarten when I was a child, then elementary and middle school. It’s actually rented out, and they wanted to turn it into a hotel. I visited all the old classrooms, the principal’s office, I took lots of photos, the kindergarten bathrooms, all in mosaic, a work of art. This is my lifelong dream: to be able to transform a place where I took my first steps and studied. Unfortunately, the operation was not successful, but the property is still there.
