The ANNOTICO Report

San Francisco Chronicle
by Laura Thomas, Staff Writer
Wednesday, August 3, 2005

While Californians are caught up in the frenzy for the Tuscan villa look
for our gardens and interiors, it's perhaps suitably ironic that Italy
looks to us for signs of what's new and cool.

So if you're envious of those who've managed to restore a crumbling
farmhouse in Italy or built a faux variety around here, take solace in
knowing the average Italian wishes he or she could live in a villa as well.

The most modest Bay Area cottage, bungalow or rancher is an impressive
villa with a garden to Italians, who live mostly in condominium apartments
in large buildings they call palazzi.

In truth, observing how Italians really live is more useful and relevant to
the way we live in the Bay Area than focusing too much on the heavily
romanticized aspects of a dying agricultural lifestyle.

On a visit to Rome this spring, I stayed with my second cousin Elvia
Romanin in the large seaside suburb of Ostia Lido and was surprised to find
that she had moved into a villa and had adopted a few of the trappings of
the American suburban lifestyle.

Ostia Lido was favored by Mussolini, who built La Via del Mare, a highway
linking it to Rome, in the 1920s. The beach is lined with palaces in the
Art Deco style known in Italy as Liberty. The rest of the city is newer and
seemingly artless compared with the beauty of older cities. But it's quite
lively, crowded with both cars and young families who find it more
attractive than living in Rome. It buzzes in the summer, when the
population of 200,000 balloons to 500,000.

"The Romans come to visit us on the weekend and bring their picnics. When
they go home, they leave us their garbage," Elvia lamented.

She and her husband, Roberto Lucchesi, and their two daughters moved in
2002 from a two-bedroom condominium to a small development that backs up to
a lush pine forest reserve that once belonged to Roman philosopher Pliny
the Elder.

In a typical arrangement, the villa is divided into four family homes, each
occupying a corner of the building, flanked by a walled garden and -- the
real shocker -- a lawn.

That's right, no gravel paths or boxwood trees, just a lawn larger than the
footprint of the house, with a couple of massive, elegant maritime pines
thrusting skyward. So, along with their sort-of-detached home, my cousins
had caught the American big-lawn fever. As I caught a glimpse of Elvia's
daughter actually pushing the lawn mower, I wondered how my Italian-born
mother would react. She would probably deny she ever scolded me for taking
pictures of her scraping paint from the back screen door in fear that her
relatives should see how far she had fallen after coming to America.

Roberto even admitted to the novelty of doing repairs around the house as
sort of a newfound pleasure. He had made himself a small workbench in the
single garage in the basement that was dug out to make a large family room,
another import from the United States. They used an American term for it,
calling it a hobby room, pronouncing it "obi," as in Obi-Wan Kenobi.

Their house is officially a one-story house, yet, Roberto hinted, it was
easy to make that declaration while going ahead with more ambitious plans.
"Nobody can tell you what to do in the basement," he said. Building permits
are a headache in Italy as well as in the Bay Area, and Italians are
masters at knowing how to bend the rules.

The basement includes a guest room and bathroom; two bedrooms were added
under the roof for a total of 2,000 square feet, a large living area for an
urban Italian family.

Homes are constructed with reinforced concrete bricks and lime and the
walls covered in plaster. Floors are done in tile or marble. Wood is a
luxury of sorts because most of Italy's forests were cut down by the Romans
centuries ago. It's part of the reason why Italian designers do wonders
with plastic.

Just like Americans, Italians favor open rooms in new construction or
knocking out walls in old palazzi to combine living and dining rooms, even
kitchens, into great rooms.

Elvia wanted a large kitchen, but decided instead to use part of the large
basement family room as an extended dining area for when her daughters'
boyfriends or her mother stay for dinner. The separate dining room is
falling out of use, she said.

"All the women work now. We don't have the energy to do those five-day
parties at the holidays. Many people prefer to go on vacation," she said.

To add character to the 30-by-16-foot room, an arched alcove with sink --
both made of travertine, Rome's locally mined marble -- were built into the
corner. The sink had a mosaic backsplash and spout in the style seen in
gardens and along roadways. A small refrigerator and set-up counter are
tucked into the corners.

A large marble fireplace faces the room. In front was a plush sofa with
pillows in brown leather alternating with an upholstered Indian pattern, a
rather unexpected pairing. "Right now, it is popular, these ethnic things,"
Elvia noted.

Her tastes are otherwise typically European: a well-considered blending of
family antiques and artwork with contemporary furniture and modular
cabinets by Italy's top design companies.

Italians like to show off la bella figura both indoors and out and view
their homes as personal statements of wealth and breeding. They will pay
high prices for elegant furniture and accessories, favoring less over more.

And women still rule. When Elvia decided on an olive green leather
sectional sofa by the premiere Milan furniture house Cassina 14 years ago,
Roberto gulped at the $9,000 price.

"With that, I could have bought a Mercedes," he said. He got nowhere with
that argument and bought a Fiat Croma instead. He admitted he might have
traded in the Mercedes by now, but the sofa, with three sections all joined
by hidden zippers to allow for changing configurations, still sits in the
living room, a symbol of that important sense of well-being Italians seek
(www.cassinausa.com).

In contrast to the American need for large, impressive gadgetry, Italians
prefer compactness with a sense of inherent grace and economy in every part
of their homes.

Elvia's kitchen was a place in which she can feel comfortable preparing the
basic meals she does well. All the cabinets and appliances, including a
half-size refrigerator, were contained along one wall and corner, covered
in a coral laminate that gave them a bright, clean look.

For everyday meals, the family sits at a table on playful green plastic
chairs with a curled ribbon-back design from Manzano in Italy's "chair
triangle" in Friuli Venezia Giulia. A conical light fixture from Murano in
a swirling deep-blue pattern hung over the table. "We had to wait four
months for it because the artisan who was making it got sick," Elvia said.
Being patient about such things, even in a speeded-up world, is something
Italians still understand.

In the same vein, they are skeptical about many appliances common in the
United States. Elvia didn't understand the need for a freezer. She cooks
only fresh food she buys daily at a small supermarket and produce stand
down the street, and she dismissed the need for a clothes dryer. "Nobody
uses them," she said. "They ruin the clothes."

Instead, she set up a collapsible clothesline, called a stenditore, on the
balcony off her bedroom and, within a few minutes, hung out an entire
washing machine load of clothes. She will iron, fold, shake out or merely
reshape each item as necessary. In the winter, one bathroom in an Italian
home will be strung with laundry much of the time.

More work? Perhaps, but for Italians, who honor the quality of their
outfits above many other things in life, it is worth it.

It's fair to mention, of course, that Elvia is a self-employed accountant,
her husband, Roberto, a retired electrical engineer for IBM. They do hire a
housekeeper to clean once a week. It allows Elvia, and many Italian women
like her, to hold on to that bit of traditional fastidiousness about the
home.

The living room blends contemporary design with family heirlooms of silver,
ceramics and art. The Cassina sofa dominates the room facing an L- shaped
entertainment center done by the Italian kitchen design company Arclinea
(www.arclineasanfrancisco.com).

Antiques and heirloom pieces, including a Liberty-style console and mirror,
surrounded the room. Paintings in heavy frames of Appenine landscapes --
Roberto's heritage -- were mixed with those from the village at the foot of
the Dolomites where both Elvia's mother and mine were born.

Elvia and Roberto hired an architect's design firm to put together the
kitchen components and the light, clean, colorful modular furniture in
their daughters' bedrooms for $13,000.

Giulia and Carlotta, both students at the University of Rome, will probably
be living at home with their parents until they are well established in
careers and marriage, and each wanted her own bedroom in the new house. It
was managed quite impressively in la mansarda, that tight space under the
roof.

Both girls chose their own set of cabinets, closets, bed frame and desk in
a maple and plastic laminate from Misura (www.mobilimisura.it). They could
mix and match colors for closet doors and shelves, which gave each room a
separate look. No monochromatic plastic shelves here.

Looking at their rooms, I marveled at the creative ingenuity of the Italian
home industry and hoped the onslaught of globalization doesn't ruin the
ability of Italians to continue to have such a wealth of wonderful
furniture made in their own country.

But I'd heard the debate on Italian TV over the prospect of lowering import
tariffs on foreign goods.

Elvia told me Italians were wary of this change. "They tell us the Chinese
can make 12 bras for one euro. Can you imagine that?"

I would hate to imagine, but it might already be happening. One day we
walked by a store in Ostia Lido that was a chilling duplicate of stores
selling everything for $1 in the United States.

What's in Italy's future? Maybe a house full of gadgets marked "Made in
China." Then Italians will truly have "caught up" to the American standard
of living.

E-mail Laura Thomas at lthomas@sfchronicle.com.

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