A new space for culture is born in Venice : it’s Casa Sanlorenzo, inaugurated to coincide with the first edition of Venice Climate Week and in the context of the Architecture Biennale, Casa Sanlorenzo is the new cultural laboratory of the Italian maison Sanlorenzo, a world leader in luxury yachting.
Located right across the street from the Basilica of Santa Maria della Salute, Casa Sanlorenzo is not intended to be just a renovated building: it will be, in the company’s vision, a center of vision and experimentation born from the Sanlorenzo Arts project, a creative incubator that has already been flanking nautical production with a broader reflection involving art, design and culture.
In outlining the mission of Casa Sanlorenzo, Massimo Perotti, Executive Chairman of Sanlorenzo, emphasized the increasingly central role that a brand like theirs is called upon to assume: “Our goal with Casa Sanlorenzo is to offer a place of reference for initiatives related to the world of Sanlorenzo Arts, a container conceived with the aim of celebrating and supporting the union between art, design and culture, where innovation and creativity can flourish without limits.”.
This is not a showroom, nor a simple gallery: Casa Sanlorenzo was born as a living place, where art and beauty become tools for dialogue. “Casa Sanlorenzo becomes the place where people enter to stop, reflect and share,” Perotti adds. “A space of research, where art does not decorate, but interrogates. Where design does not impress, but accompanies. Where beauty is never an end in itself, but the bearer of ethics. In an increasingly virtual world, we wanted to invest in presence, in encounter, in experience. Because we believe that authenticity needs matter, time, glances. And Venice represents the perfect place for this project.”
Casa Sanlorenzo presents itself as a constantly evolving organism, structured to be inclusive, open and participation-oriented. Its architecture, designed by Piero Lissoni with Lissoni & Partners, covers about 1,000 square meters, with also a garden of about 600 square meters, rare and precious in the Venetian urban fabric.
The space is divided into two interconnected sections : a private part, namely the apartment called Casa Sanlorenzo, and more than 700 square meters dedicated to exhibitions, displays and the maison’s contemporary art collection. A collection that covers a time span from 1965 to the present and presents itself as a bridge between artistic generations, bearing witness to cultural transformations and aesthetic trends.
Casa Sanlorenzo stands inside a 1940s mansion, restored with philological attention and contemporary sensitivity. The brick facades have been preserved and enhanced, as have some of the original floors. Where recovery was not possible, the architectural reinterpretation was able to combine functionality and memory, enhancing the exhibition vocation of the space.
One of the most significant elements is the glass staircase: transparent, technological, it dialogues with the geometries of the building and introduces modern materials such as glass and steel, restoring lightness and openness to the interior. The floors alternate between concrete, Palladian and Portoro, while the white walls act as a neutral canvas for the works on display. The fully adaptive lighting system allows for tailor-made light adjustment, enhancing artistic enjoyment and enhancing each installation.
An element of strong symbolic and design significance is the bridge that connects Casa Sanlorenzo to the surrounding area. Also designed by Lissoni & Partners, it is not only a functional structure, but a true cultural manifesto. “I think the opportunity to build a bridge in Venice for Sanlorenzo Arts is more unique than rare,” said Piero Lissoni. “The bridge is in fact an incredibly complex architectural scale and also carries a number of other meanings for me. In addition to connecting two different points, the bridge connects different worlds. It is no coincidence that the expressions ’creating cultural bridges’ and ’making human bridges’ are used. This bridge for me is not simply a machine for transporting people, but a cultural bridge, an ideal bridge.”
The bridge is made of prefabricated metal, with a surface of Istrian stone and a wooden handrail worked like an oar, a tribute to the lagoon dimension of the city. The humpbacked shape recalls medieval bridges, while the metal arch returns a restrained but decisive aesthetic. The calendering of the metal, the steps in non-slip Venetian masegni, and the anti-corrosion treatment testify to the engineering care of the work. A bridge, then, that not only connects, but tells: the will to build cultural and social ties through architecture.
Casa Sanlorenzo does not just host artworks or temporary exhibitions: it becomes an active space in cultural and environmental debate. From June 4 to 6, in fact, it hosts the Sanlorenzo Talks, a series of meetings and dialogues as part of Venice Climate Week, focused on pressing issues such as ecological transition and sustainable innovation.
Prominent figures from the worlds of science, culture and industry participate in these events, in an open discussion that focuses on the relationship between entrepreneurial responsibility and global challenges. This is yet another step in Sanlorenzo’s cultural strategy, which reaffirms its commitment to promoting content capable of impacting the present.
Casa Sanlorenzo presents itself as a crossroads of languages, a place where culture is not ornamentation but a transformative drive. With its opening, Venice is enriched with a new garrison of contemporary art, capable of combining tradition with research, beauty with ethics, enterprise with vision.
Sanlorenzo, through this project, redesigns its role in society, demonstrating that even in luxury it is possible - indeed, necessary - to take responsibility and contribute to collective growth. Not only yachts, then, but ideas, encounters, connections. A new route for the contemporary, plotted among the Venetian calli and destined to travel far.
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| Casa Sanlorenzo opens in Venice: art, design and culture in the new route of sustainable luxury |
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