n the banks of the Soligo River, amid the
prosecco-producing hills of northern Treviso, sits
a 17th-century granary whose timber-girded attic
attracts a lot of stares from pedestrians. It’s not the
antiquity of the converted home that’s astonishing –
almost everything in this village is several hundred
years old – but the sight through the windows of
a glowing flock of pentagon-shaped lights, floating
like UFOs beneath an old pitched ceiling.
The home belongs to Paolo Tormena, CEO of
Italian furniture manufacturer Henge, and his
companion, the brand’s architect, Isabella Genovese.
To transform the old garret into a contemporary
apartment, Massimo Castagna, Henge’s artistic
director, applied the brand’s artisan-crafted, material-
driven aesthetic to every corner and detail of the
living space, from the wide entrance door encasedin brass to the slatted diamonds of the laser-cut wood
floors, as well as hidden details, like the custom-crafted
recycling bins and silverware holders in oxidised iron.
The coat closet and laundry room are hidden behind
doors covered in planks of buffed brass. Sculptures in
marble and metal – one of the few touches not created
by Henge but instead by the likes of Sara Ricciardi,
Fausto Salvi and Lara Bohinc – perfectly match the
cast brass and bronze side tables on which they stand.
On a wet spring day, I meet with Tormena, Castagna
and Genovese at the apartment. Beyond the kitchen
island, a 5m-long faceted monolith in cappuccino
marble, the attic’s original Palladian arched windows
overlook clusters of old terracotta roofs. At a banquet
table – the other 5m-long mammoth of the kitchen,
this one constructed in fossilised oak – Tormena settles
into a brass-framed chair padded with nubuck. ‘The
most important thing for us was that our home would
not be another white cube,’ he says. So they started
with an odd-shaped and old-fangled granary.
‘Contemporary houses in every part of the world
are identical – they’re all white cubes. But in Italy we
still have plenty of historic structures,’ says Castagna.
‘And it’s more interesting for us to reinterpret our own
traditions, to make them relevant for today.’
The home, instead of a conventional cube, is
an open-plan sloped loft, a converted industrial space
in a sense, but one where the industry existed four
centuries ago and was headquartered in a warehouse
made of stucco and hewn trees. The pitched roof is
the visual cornerstone of the apartment, its expanse
unbroken by inner walls. The small bedroom is
sheltered by a half wall and its own low-rising gabled
ceiling, while the rest of the attic’s airy space is given
over to dining and lounging – to the two kitchen
monoliths and the ink-hued leather sofa that runs
the length of the living room, with its own smaller
round table of cinder-coloured marinace granite slab.
‘Plenty of space for being with friends,’ says Tormena.
Henge design defines everything here, so the
residence has also become a sort of experiential
showroom, where clients can dine with Tormena
and Genovese at the conveniently lengthy table, set
today with platters of local salamis and cheeses and
glasses of prosecco from the couple’s own vineyard.
‘It’s important to do these dinners here, where you
don’t just see what we make – you live it, you use it,
you interact with it,’ says Tormena. The couple has
purchased space on the floor below, which they intend
to transform into two guest bedrooms in order to
offer visitors a thorough Henge experience. But before
this place was a business asset, it was (and remains)
a home – a home that needed to be both beautiful
and functional, designed by Castagna for his bosses.
‘Ha,’ says Castagna, who shrugs at the idea. ‘They’re
more like co-conspirators.’
To establish the DNA of Henge, Tormena and
Castagna deliberated for a whole year before their
inaugural presentation of five pieces at Milan’s Salone
del Mobile in 2011. ‘The first time I met Massimo,
I showed up with a piece of stone, a piece of brass, and
a piece of wood in my hands,’ says Tormena. ‘Materials
were always going to be at the heart of everything.’
‘Paolo was the first collaborator who didn’t
immediately start talking to me about ‘product’,’ »OPPOSITE, THE MAIN LIVING
AREA WITH THE PENTAGON-
SHAPED LIGHTS AT ONE END
OF THE ROOM AND THE
MONOLITHIC MARBLE KITCHEN
ISLAND AT THE OTHER
ABOVE, THE SLATTED
DIAMONDS OF THE LASER-CUT
WOOD FLOOR AND THE COAT
CLOSET, WHICH IS HIDDEN
BEHIND BUFFED BRASS DOORSIn Residence
O