06 · Heritage
Vintage
A piano nobile on the Grand Canal, conserved rather than restored — and furnished with almost nothing.
- Location
- Hyedrabad, India
- Year
- 2023
- Area
- 1,150 m²
- Duration
- 34 months
A foundation acquired the floor for occasional use and permanent conservation. They asked for a scheme that would be legible in a hundred years as a considered moment, not a pastiche.
We conserved the frescoes as fragments rather than completing them, lacquered the surviving panelling in a single deep green, and introduced only eleven contemporary pieces — each clearly of our own century.
- Heritage restoration
- Interior architecture
- Fresco conservation
- Furniture curation
- Palazzo Green#26382E
- Old Gilt#9C7B3C
- Fresco Rose#B39084
- Ash#CFC7BB
- Venetian lacquer
- Nine coats, hand-polished, deep forest
- Terrazzo alla veneziana
- Original, consolidated in situ
- Fresco fragment
- Conserved, edges deliberately unresolved
- Murano glass
- Commissioned from Fornace Signoretti
Four hundred years of water
Rising damp had taken the lower two metres of every wall. Conservation began eighteen months before design began.
Emptiness as respect
The great sala holds four objects. Nothing more was needed and nothing more was permitted.
Lacquer over loss
Where panelling had been lost entirely, we did not replicate it. The new surfaces are flat, green and honest about their date.
Nine coats, hand-polished
The lacquer was applied over eleven weeks by two specialists, each coat cut back by hand before the next.
Canal light on green
Reflected water moves across the lacquer all day. It is the only animation in an otherwise entirely still set of rooms.
- Interior Architecture
- Nesva Studio
- Fresco Conservation
- Studio Bellini
- Lacquer
- Laboratorio Dorsoduro
- Photography
- Camille Aubert
Next Project
House of Quiet Light
Delhi · 2021
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- Telephone
- +91 9999512096
- Studios
- India
- Availability
- Commissions worldwide
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