CASE STUDY
design vision, where production, storytelling and hospitality become parts of one coherent experience.
The distinctive character of the project also lies in the very nature of the intervention. More than a radical transformation, Casa Ruffino took shape as a deep restyling carried out with intentionally limited margins of freedom. The brief required the existing structure to be preserved almost in its entirety, despite the fact that it had undergone numerous alterations over time, many of them of limited architectural significance. b-arch’ s task was therefore to turn this constraint into a design quality, intervening with almost surgical precision in order to restore coherence, identity and perceptual intensity to a heterogeneous whole.
A precise idea— both cultural and spatial— guided the entire project: sprezzatura. In the Renaissance sense described by Baldassarre Castiglione and later revisited by Monsignor Giovanni Della Casa, sprezzatura is that subtle quality through which elegance appears natural, spontaneous, almost effortless. It is a grace that does not show itself, an elegance that never declares its own effort. It is also a deeply Italian quality: the ability to live beauty naturally, allowing aesthetics, culture and everyday life to coexist in an equilibrium that appears simple but is in fact highly sophisticated.
From this came the decision to move away from the most predictable iconography of the traditional winery. Rather than replicating the most recognisable codes of the wine world— the barrel as dominant image, the vat, the almost liturgical ritual of the sommelier— the project builds a different imaginary: more contemporary, more sensual, freer. It is an innovative language, yet one deeply rooted in Italian and Tuscan culture, drawing on iconic Italian design and intertwining it with a series of custom-made elements designed by b-arch. The result is a deliberately antirhetorical narrative of wine, one that does not deny tradition but rereads it through a more contemporary, more sensorial code, closer to the culture of design.
Within this framework, colour assumes a decisive role. With the exception of the rooms of the Wine Relais, the entire intervention is traversed by a deep chromatic note inspired by grape must, enveloping the visitor in an immersive and coherent experience. In the winery itself— the symbolic and productive heart of Ruffino— painting the space in this hue was the very first design gesture, a foundational move from which all subsequent interventions unfolded. From there, the colour extends into the tasting rooms, the wine shop, the Tre Rane Restaurant and the common areas, building a perceptual continuity that unifies different functions within one material and sensorial narrative.
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