Loggia dei Consoli

In the Loggia dei Consoli wallpaper I recognise the severe elegance of the Gothic, the style that raised the palaces of civic power as declarations of order and permanence.

The design shows the façade of a civic palace seen frontally, symmetrical, set out in three horizontal bands: on the ground floor a loggia of seven tall pointed arches, carried on slender piers with foliate capitals, opens onto an arcade in shadow; on the piano nobile a row of two-light windows with a central colonnette and trefoil head, framed in moulded stone, repeats the same rhythm; above, a crenellated parapet runs continuous, marked by square merlons that trace the line of the roof.

I look at this architecture and read in it the ancient measure of civic life: the ochre and honey-coloured stone, the grey-brown shadows in the arcades, the almost black points deep in the loggia, the pale reflections along the string courses and the edges of the merlons. It is a language that speaks of threshold and of shelter, of a community gathering under the same portico.

At WallZad I wanted every ashlar joint, every fluting of the colonnettes, every worn edge of the merlons to stay legible, so that the stone goes on telling its story even on the wall of a home, a studio, a hotel. This is how the Loggia dei Consoli wallpaper came about: a single architectural image, faithful in its materials and in its light, made to stay long under the eye.