The new (design) look of the library of the millenary Monastery of Camaldoli

Wrapped in an ethereal white, a maze of rooms and passages unfolds

The rooms, contained and intimate, welcome tables with a suspended effect and bookcases with contemporary lines that integrate with the existing architecture. In their essential linearity, the furnishings signed Lago are able to keep the human, symbolic and spiritual of the place.

The result is a space open to the public where rooms set up with solutions d ' versatile and functional furniture for archiving and consultation volumes alternate with corridors wrapped in ethereal white.

A memory archive holds 50,000 precious books

Orderly scanning of pure (and austere) volumes of cabinets Fantin creates a real 'a memory repository, from 1200 to the present day. The secular library in fact collects a book heritage of about 50,000 volumes.

“The entrance to the library involves a detachment from the fast and accelerated time of everyday life to be touched by a different rhythm , where the architectural space leads into a existential time of listening, reading, and depth” explains Don Alessandro Barban, Prior General of the Monastic Community of Camaldoli.

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“It's about acquiring another breath, made up of attention, calm and peace. To read, study and think you need silence, waiting, true inspiration” continues the prior. “Personally I like the limited space of the rooms, which calls to concentration , to custody, almost to the secret of the monastic cell”.

Even today, a thousand years after its birth, the community of Camaldoli is a place of monastic life and spiritual research, animated all year round by pilgrims and visitors.

In Bavaria, the headquarters of a ’i m construction company includes a former convent

The new headquarters of the construction company Josef Rädlinger, in the Swiss town of Cham, is a complex created from the merger of a contemporary office building and the ancient adjoining convent.

The harmonic ensemble, designed by the architectural firm Berschneider + Berschneider, offers contemporary and welcoming working environments. Overlooking the Bavarian forests, the bright spaces are furnished with versatile Thonet furniture with a design without time.

The former convent, completely renovated, houses several rooms, as well as the company kitchen with restaurant and bar. The heart of the building is the imposing dining room where flashy chandeliers and integrated ventilation in gilded organ pipes refer to the sacredness of which the space is imbued. Here, the famous black stained seats of the model 214 (No. 14) by Thonet create an interesting contrast with the original oak parquet, giving life to the typical atmosphere of a café rather than a canteen.

There is no lack of a (profane) Italian touch

The former convent also houses a bar with an immediate reference to the Bel Paese: alongside the elegant 204 MH stools in bent wood by Thonet, there are famous Italian advertising posters framed on the walls.

The monumental spaces of a 17th century monastery come to life again in a resort

In Amsterdam, a former church has been converted into a low budget accommodation

The former church of Santa Rita in Amsterdam has become a new hotel, both for its location - monastic - of great charm both for the hospitality proposal at low cost. Designed by the architect Alexander Kropholler in the 1920s , the monumental building but from austere red brick architecture, today houses the new Bunk Hotel Amsterdam.

The conversion project, signed by architect Rob Salemans of the Raumkultur studio with the owner Robin Hagedoorn and a team of Dutch creatives, has respected the original building: the exterior has remained intact, only a neon fuchsia writing illuminates the entrance , as well as the brick arches and the wooden truss inside.

Read also: the Bunk Hotel Amsterdam project

Art: in 2023 spirituality will radically transform the ’ HangarBicocca

The 2022-2023 programming of Pirelli HangarBicocca was presented: eight monographic exhibitions of protagonists of the international scene among which the one dedicated to Gian Maria Tosatti stands out, whose research focuses on the idea of collectivity and memory, in their historical, political and also spiritual value.

The exhibition project curated by Vicente Todolí, scheduled from 23 February to 16 July 2023 , is conceived as a major environmental intervention that will radically transform the space of the Shed.

Design: the frescoed rooms of a former convent become the set of the shooting of Draga & Aurel

Dredger & Aurel embark on a sort of journey in search of picturesque views to pay homage to the unknown, recovered or even abandoned places of Lake Como, a land of adoption and inspiration for the couple of artists- designer Draga Obradovic, Serbian, and Aurel K. Basedow, German.

The frescoed walls of the former convent of Santa Caterina in Como, built in 1634 on foundations of the end of 1200, caressed by the light that, from the large windows, floods the high echoing rooms, become the disturbing set of a new photographic series signed by Riccardo Gasperoni in which history and ancient art enter into dialogue with the Transparency Matters art design pieces, emphasizing their sense of reinvention.

A scratchy location. Nude

A place where sacred and profane, lightness and solidity, lights and shadows coexist, to evoke, in a game of references, the same sensations returned by tables, consoles, benches, lamps and hand-made dividers that they juxtapose shades and reflections, transparencies and textures , contrasting textures and materials: resin, concrete, glass and bronze. Today the deconsecrated and abandoned former convent has become the seat of the non-profit cultural association Borgovico 33 which promotes contemporary artistic projects.

The mystical, irreverent (and disruptive) faces of creativity: Antonio Aricò and Federico Cannata

Narrator able to contaminate the traditions and folklore of his land - Calabria - with a language that is as contemporary as it is authentic, Antonio Aricò revisits design as a ritual, imbued with spirituality . As the art director of Materia Independent Design Festival 2020 he involved established designers and young talents in the reinterpretation of religious symbols and church furnishings.

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Mediterranean, narrative and pop also the ' artist and photographer Federico Cannata. Born in Modica, he creates works - inflamed by a bright lime green - with evocative accents that refer to Baroque architecture and Sicilian spirituality. Images with immediate contemporary references mix with imposing cathedrals and opulent aristocratic palaces.

Read also: Barocco & Neo-Baroque in Ragusa