ALEXANDRE ARRECHEA, VILLA BALMAIN, HEXAGON GARDEN

Pierre Balmain envisioned Villa Balmain as a haven of peace, far away from the frenzy of his Parisian professional life. He dreamt of a hidden, lush island escape, where he could refresh, relax and think about his next collections. The Villa’s radical elliptical architecture, constructed from both local granite and reinforced concrete, has been compared to a spaceship, a boat set for sail, and “a dragon-fly perched on the mountain-side.” Balmain himself summed it up as a “Hollywood-style” creation. Ricci’s structure capitalizes on the dynamism and fluidity of curving lines, while making very clear why the architect was recognized as a master in integrating his creations into the surrounding landscape.

Since the late ‘40s, the bee, often set inside a circle, was a favorite symbol for Pierre Balmain’s jewelry designs—and the designer also incorporated that same image for his own distinctive ex-libris mark. In addition, many of his couture designs incorporated the precise and eye-catching hexagonal pattern of the honeycomb. And, after 1960, once he had finished his new retreat on the isle of Elba, bees began to assume even more importance in the life of Pierre Balmain. More than 150 years earlier, during his short, forced exile on the island, Napoleon Bonaparte had translated his own fascination with the symbol of the bee into an original and bold official symbol for the island principality that he ruled over: a white background crossed by a single red band decorated with three golden bees. That fascinating pattern remains a familiar emblem of the island today, decorating flags, coats of arms and public spaces—and it’s certain that Pierre Balmain spotted those symbols often during his Elba stays.

Leonardo Ricci’s masterful blending together of Villa Balmain’s exterior and the interior spaces clearly inspired Cuban artist Alexandre Arrechea for his Miami Art Week installation. For “Hexagon Garden,” a site-specific virtual and physical commission shown at Superblue Miami, Arrechea has transported Villa Balmain to the Web3 universe, relying on LITO’s proprietary technology to create a large-scale, immersive environment enveloping Ricci’s construction. After slipping on their headsets, metaverse visitors will first spy an enormous golden ring floating around Arrechea’s reimagination of Ricci’s one-of-a-kind structure—and, as they approach, the ring reveals the precise geometric pattern of a honeycomb.
 

Leonardo Ricci (Rome, June 8, 1918 - Venice, September 29, 1994) was one of the major forces of the modern "Florentine school.” He was a pupil and later collaborator of the great Italian architect, urban planner and designer Giovanni Michelucci, a colleague of the architect and painter Leonardo Savioli, a friend of Albert Camus (with whom he shared a theoretical approach derived from Existentialism), a painter attracted to Picasso and Pollock, Dean at the University of Florence, visiting professor at M.I.T. and other American Universities and, of course, an exceptional architect.