“Sleeping within a utopia. Inhabiting it, touching it, absorbing its human, experimental, historical, and architectural value. That utopia conceived by Enrico Mattei, designed by Edoardo Gellner and Carlo Scarpa, and lived by a generation of Eni Group employees who spent their summer vacations here. Each in turn, for two weeks a year, on equal footing, without privileges for executives, like a family. The death of Enrico Mattei in 1962 halted the noble mission.The utopia was essentially a holiday village set on 120 hectares at the foot of Mount Antelao, with two hotels, villas nestled in the woods, a campsite for children, huts for teenagers, a church, tennis courts, bowling alleys, spaces for leisure, aggregation, refreshment. Gellner’s studio, composed of about fifteen collaborators, realized every detail, from architecture to stools. The primary idea was to conceive small, all panoramic rooms, facing south, reserving large spaces for common areas. La Chiesa di Nostra Signora del Cadore was entrusted to Carlo Scarpa, a Venetian architect, Gellner’s master. The sacred place, like an equilateral triangle of concrete, iron, wood, barely emerges above the Boite hotel and seems to protect it. Unfortunately, the project remained unfinished.
After various mutations, today the Hotel Boite relives a happy season thanks to the conservative recovery implemented by the new ownership (Cualbu Group), to which credit goes for making what remains speak and drawing inspiration from the community ideas that had nourished the foundation of the village. Thus began a process of recovering that dream which still today, perhaps it would be fair to say, more than ever today, represents something immense. Following these principles, Francesco Accardo, curator of the hotel, more than a “general manager,” has resumed the old stacked furnishings (benches, stools, lamps), brought to the table a simple mountain cuisine, recovered values such as sharing, aggregation, sociality, and a sort of entrepreneurial honesty, involved young talents like Alessandra Frau of “Courtesy of.”, who curated the development of the visual identity and logo and invited emerging artists to express themselves within the walls of the Hotel. Tonight in the lounge in front of the bar, a crowd of locals attends a conference dedicated to discovering three small local realities; in the large square fireplace, the fire crackles. It is one of the many events that Francesco organizes to ignite connections, dialogues, collaborations, to give voice to small, great local projects. Outside, it snows, a dense whiteness that descends slowly, like the light into the dark, like an utopia.”
Words and pictures Meraviglia Paper.