In the meantime, Architectural Digest published this story of a rustically, modern farmhouse in Italy. The article appeared in the February, 2013 issue. Enjoy the images!
Buon giorno! xo, CM
A RUSTIC FARMHOUSE IN THE HILLS OF ITALY
On a pastoral estate in Umbria, aristocratic architect Benedikt Bolza transforms a centuries-old house into a grand, rustic dwelling for his young family
Text by Marella Caracciolo | Photography by Simon Watson | Styled by Howard Christian
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| Architect Benedikt Bolza with his wife, Nencia, and their five children at his family’s sprawling Umbrian estate, Castello di Reschio, where he rebuilds and manages centuries-old stone houses for clients. |
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| For his own home on the site, Benedikt completely remade the interiors and added a glass atrium, visible here, to enclose the building’s courtyard. |
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| The architect designed most of the drawing room’s furnishings, including the wood-and-brass console, the sofa, and the cast-bronze cocktail table. |
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| In the dining alcove, the banquette and oak table were custom made. |
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| A sitting area in the kitchen is outfitted with built-in sofas, a table fashioned from an antique door, and a floor of flagstones salvaged from nearby stables; the shelves are lined with jars of peeled tomatoes from the family’s garden. |
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| The kitchen’s massive oak-top island features sink fittings by KWC. |
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| A 1950s table sits at the base of the home’s main stairwell in a former courtyard, now enclosed in glass. |
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| A custom-made chaise longue in the study. |
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| In the double-height master bath, Benedikt designed the mirrors, heated copper towel racks, and travertine-top washstands, the latter equipped withLefroy Brooks fittings. |
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| One of the guest rooms is appointed with a vintage English brass bed. |
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| Benedikt designed the twin steel beds in this guest room, and Nencia hand-painted the floor. |
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| Another guest bath, clad in mosaic tile, also features Lefroy Brooks fittings. |
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| A guest bath has a concrete-and-resin shower with Lefroy Brooks fittings; the stone sink is antique. |
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| The children’s playroom. |
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| The garden room is highlighted by original limed-oak beams and a mantelpiece crafted from reclaimed sandstone. |
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| One of the façades, which overlooks walled gardens, features a gridded brise-soleil that Benedikt created to filter sunlight entering the master bath. |
At the time, their son Benedikt was studying to become an architect, and he soon joined the family operation, overseeing the restoration and design work on the estate. In the roughly 13 years since, Benedikt has painstakingly rebuilt 22 of the 50 houses (another three are now in progress), complete with bespoke interiors, traditional gardens, and infinity pools. The estate also offers resortlike services catering to an elite international clientele of buyers and renters.
“We not only design the homes and gardens for our clients, we manage their properties,” explains Benedikt, who also serves as the estate’s director. For years he and his family camped out in the drafty rooms of Reschio’s 11th-century castle, but eventually the time came to put down more permanent roots—especially after his wife, Nencia (of the princely Corsini family from Florence), became pregnant with their fifth child. “The castle was freezing, and when it rained we had to pull out dozens of buckets and even some umbrellas,” Nencia recalls. “We needed a home of our own, and it had to be a big one!”
The couple decided to take one of the estate’s largest homes, which also happened to be among the most challenging to update. Though its timeworn stone exterior was in decent condition, the interiors were a different story. “It was a labyrinth of staircases and poky rooms for seasonal workers and their families,” says Benedikt, who is known as Count Bolza, a title conferred by his aristocratic Austro-Hungarian lineage. “The only solution was a radical one—demolish the interiors and rebuild them from scratch, adding a level for extra space.” The architect had initially set his eyes on a less complicated property, but Nencia insisted this was the one. “I was thinking of the children,” she says. “From here they can walk to the horse stables.”
By the time Benedikt and his team of more than 100 builders and craftspeople tackled the house, he had a crystal-clear idea of how it would all fit together. “The truth is,” he says, “I love to plan every detail, from the roof down to the tiniest lampshade.” In the early years of the Castello di Reschio project, Benedikt’s obsessiveness didn’t always go over well with the workers. “They weren’t used to detailed drawings, and they thought they knew better,” he says. “In time they learned to be more meticulous. I, on the other hand, learned from their knowledge of traditional building materials.”
One notable feature of the Bolzas’ home—which has two floors in some sections, three in others—is the fluidity of its structure. Most of the common areas are connected to an arresting two-story central staircase, composed of a solid sandstone lower portion and an open steel-and-wood upper flight. Set within the original stone courtyard, which is now enclosed in glass, the stairs are part of a luminous inner atrium that infuses the old building with a contemporary dynamism.
The home’s hub of activity is its vast kitchen, distinguished by a dramatic vaulted limestone ceiling striped with steel beams, a polished-concrete floor, stainless-steel cabinetry, and a wood-burning oven devised by Benedikt. “I love concocting recipes here with Marco Pellegrini, the chef who runs Reschio’s restaurant,” Nencia says. She notes that her kitchen can accommodate nearly three dozen people, thanks to large yet intimate seating alcoves. “It is common for us to have hordes of guests,” she says, “especially when my twin sister, Fiona, and her six children come to visit.” In the summer, when Nencia organizes theater camps for family and friends, at least 40 children stay at the house, she says, adding, “most of them sleep in tents in the garden!”
All the interior spaces were conceived jointly by Benedikt and Nencia, who first came to Reschio as a trompe l’oeil decorative painter in 1998. “Benedikt’s parents commissioned me to decorate one of the houses on the estate,” she remembers. “That’s how I met my husband.” Nencia likes to experiment with her own pigments. “I recently discovered that oil paint works well on travertine, so I decorated the floors of some of the bedrooms with colorful patterns.”
With the exception of a smattering of vintage pieces, most of the furnishings in the house—from the kitchen’s nearly eight-foot-square dining table (made of reclaimed oak and steel from wine barrels) to the locally crafted lamps used throughout—were designed by Benedikt. In the master bedroom, the upholstered armchair is bespoke, as is the freestanding cast-iron tub, cozily positioned near the fireplace. The couple’s double-height bath features hand-cut travertine sinks fitted with copper mirrors. Sunlight filters into the space through a two-story gridded brise-soleil conceived by Benedikt that resembles those found in traditional brick hay barns.
The experience of renovating the house and living with so many of his own designs prompted Benedikt to launch a line of furniture, which he plans to begin offering for sale online in May. The estate, however, remains his priority. “When my parents bought this property, I was only a student,” he says. “But I knew my destiny as an architect was inextricably tied to this place.”
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