Clay Court Club | Cristina Celestino 重新定义米兰百年网球俱乐部

With Clay Court Club, Cristina Celestino continues her research into several iconic yet hidden locations across the city of Milan for Milan Design Week. The project, which began in 2018 with Tram Corallo, Caffè Concerto Cucchi in 2019 and most recently Florilegio in 2022 provides an evocative and unique perspective on the city through the eyes of a design local.

The wide range of interventions manifests itself in a complex design approach, involving the entire space, reinterpreting the genius loci, and generating new, unexpected relationships. For this year’s hidden gem, the designer chose the Giovanni Muzio-designed Tennis Club Milano Bonacossa, completed in 1930.

Tennis Club Milano Bonacossa is a revered institution in the city’s sporting scene, having played host to numerous prestigious international sports events. Over the years, its courts have been graced by generations of tennis players, many of whom have held top spots in the world ranking and a tennis training school that has been a driving force in promoting young talent since 1937. For over eight decades, The Tennis Club Milano Alberto Bonacossa has been an integral part of the rich cultural heritage of Milan and a real cradle of tennis in Italy.

Located in an emerging suburban context, along the northwest of Milan, Giovanni Muzio provided his own interpretation on the theme of architecture dedicated to sport and leisure, destined to an elite client commissioned by Count Alberto Bonacossa. In the Tennis Club Milano there is a clear reference to the classical tradition of architecture and the use of figures and compositional modules of the Milanese twentieth century.

Through the simplification of the existing architectural language, Cristina stages a role-play, overturning the perception of indoor spaces and generating a chromatic connection with the outdoors. The research on the geometric connection between a line and a semicircle, one of Muzio’s favourite composition themes, becomes the connecting feature of the objects set out in space, for which the use of materials is always constituent and never decorative.

Engaging in detailed graphic rigour, the new flooring becomes a reference for the red clay courts, emphasising the rich decorations of the original marble flooring. Furniture elements are arranged according to an out-of-scale logic, generating a new perspective order, that seeks to generate new identities and focus, thus pursuing Muzio’s long yearning for asymmetry.

Cristina’s windows into Milan’s hidden past are quickly becoming a favourite Milan Design Week event of ours and it’s not hard to see why.

[Images courtesy of Cristina Celestino. Photography by De Pasquale Maffini.]

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