A composition of clean volumes, of hard and rough materials such as granite, glass and metal, tempered by the reflection of the pool water which multiplies the sculptural landscape of the bay of Porto Cervowith the rocks shaped by the wind that inspired the organic architecture of Jacques Couëlle: it is the first Defender House Italian, a brutalist villa which for the first 15 days of September told journalists, clients and guests the soul of Defenderthe British off-road vehicle born in 1948 based on a design by Maurice Wilks with the name Land Rover (it was only called Defender in 1990).
After being a robust, simple and effective car for many years, without particular aesthetic or technological ambitions, in 2019 it changed character, combining off-road performance with the characteristics we ask for in a car capable of accompanying us even where the road begins. asphalt.
If from a design point of view the simple and monolithic forms of the Defender House in Porto Cervo are the architectural transposition of those of the car, even the location reflects this multiple soul: a few kilometers from us there is the splendor of the Costa Smeralda, but opening the windows in the morning your eyes are filled with an almost Martian landscape, with the blue of the sea contrasting with the red of the rocks which fades into the dark green of the vegetation. Surrounding us is the harsh and ancestral nature of Sardinia beyond the beaches and stereotypes, a land where, as Michela Murgia wrote in her Trip to Sardinia. Eleven routes on the island that cannot be seen (Einaudi, 2008), “there are statues of ancient warriors as tall as no Sardinian has ever been, grim cults of saints that the Popes forgot to canonize, stone doors that open onto worlds that have now disappeared, and distant seas of wheat from the sea, studded with menhirs against which the brides-to-be shamelessly rub their bellies in the secret of the night, watched over by mothers and grandmothers”.
It is this dualism – which ultimately characterizes all of us, torn between the need for a comfortable urban life and the search for a natural Eden where we can test ourselves – which we feel continually brought into play in the experiences offered inside and outside the Defender House, between moments of tailor-made wellness and training (created in partnership with Technogym) and offroad aboard Defender in the mountains overlooking Poltu Quatu. The Defender Experience Area has been set up here: a space where the experts from the Land Rover Experience team have prepared very steep climbs, ditches, paths that leave the car poised at 45 degrees and other instabilities that allow you to discover the capabilities of the Terrain Response system ( now available in its second version): a real computer that assists the driver, allowing him to tackle any type of terrain, from grass to gravel, from snow to mud, from sand to fords.
The brand also responds to this hybrid lifestyle, which is perhaps the only one truly possible beyond utopias Defender Eco Home, the sustainable and itinerant mini house that landed in Sardinia after crossing Italy, stopping on the slopes of Etna, in the Salento hinterland, in the Tuscan Maremma, in the Dolomites and in the Langhe; and with the new roof tent developed for the New Defender 110: a sort of room with a mobile view capable of accommodating two adults on full-size cotton mattresses, equipped with cushions, internal LED light and storage net.
Managing Editor of elledecor.it, I transformed my degree in architecture at the Polytechnic of Milan into a lens to look at (and talk about) the world. With particular attention to those who design the spaces and objects that we take for granted: from lesser-known portions of the city to the sets of a film, up to the design pieces that form the backdrop to the posts that scroll through our Instagram feeds. On Instagram I post memories like @carlotta_marelli and exaggeratedly decorated spaces like @bye_minimalism.
