With the 33rd Olympic Games in Paris just around the corner (26 July – 11 August), CONI (the Italian Olympic Committee, ed.) has chosen an iconic building to welcome the athletes and guests of the Italia Team: Le Pré Catelan. The structure, in Napoleon III style and located in the Bois de Boulogne not far from the Champs Élysées, was the site selected in 1894 for the dinner to celebrate the modern Olympic Games; today it has been transformed as Casa Italia Paris 2024 through Ensemble, the concept that over the years has made the center for Italian athletes an internationally renowned brand.
Organized with large, luminous spaces, Casa Italia provides an experience paced by art, architecture, furnishings and lighting with outstanding design, featuring historic and contemporary pieces. Visitors will be immersed in the rooms, wrapped by a series of settings inspired by the great interiors of the Italian 20th-century tradition, made with the contributions of 19 Italian contemporary artists and the creations of 28 world-famous designers. The latter group includes exceptional names like Formafantasma for Rubelli, Francesco Binfaré for Edra, Marco Lavit for Ethimo, Patricia Urquiola for Glas Italia, Sebastian Herkner for Moroso, Brodie Neill for Riva 1920, Gaetano Pesce for B&B Italia, Michael Anastassiades for Flos, Ettore Sottsass for Poltronova, Metrica and Antti Kotilainen for Arper and many others.
The large windows of Le Pré Catelan face onto a garden enhanced for the occasion with typical plants of the Italian landscape. Ensemble thus becomes a total artwork: not just a combination of indoors and outdoors, new and existing, artifice and nature, emphasizing the concept of intertwining suggested by the Olympic circles, but also a communicator of values of sustainability through the use of natural and recycled fabrics, and design furnishings Made in Italy, created by our country’s leading talents to last in time.
In a particularly delicate moment in history, Casa Italia Paris 2024 underscores the notion of brotherhood (from the French motto Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité): a word that symbolizes cooperation between neighboring and “brotherly” countries like France and Italy, while fully describing the Italian identity, which has always been the result of exchange and dialogue between cultures.
