" Their Place in the Sun. Tacit Agencies in Villa Graziani and Villa Guinness in Sardinia" a Lecture by Michela Bonomo / TPOD
Event details
| Date | 27.10.2025 |
| Hour | 18:00 › 20:00 |
| Speaker | Michela Bonomo |
| Location | |
| Category | Conferences - Seminars |
| Event Language | English |
Abstract
The story of one of the most elitist tourist resorts in Europe, Costa Smeralda in the North of Sardinia, has often been told from the point of view of male protagonists involved in its conception and construction. From Ismail Prince Karim Aga Kahn, who saw the real estate potential of purchasing parcels from local shepherds to the selected group of male architects (such as Luigi Vietti, Michele Busiri Vici, and Jacques Coüelle) employed to forge a new architectural identity.
Women have primarily been presented through the seductive performativity of their bodies, as in Slim Aarons’ photographs that cemented the ideology of the glamorous ‘Mediterranean holiday’. The tanned and objectified female body was instrumental not only in reinforcing the myths of the ‘Mediterraneanists [who] often fell back upon cliches (sun worship, human centeredness, the pleasure-loving life, even backwardness) to describe what made it different from other parts of the world,’– but also as a tourist marketing tool for the region and Italy as a whole.
This paper focuses on the story of two women: Simone Bodine, in art, Bettina Graziani (1925–2015), and Dolores Guinness (1936-2012), analyzing their tacit agency in the making of Costa Smeralda as well as their pioneering role in the evolution of the Sardinian coastline. Both women were not only photographed by Slim Aarons, but they also commissioned their holiday villa to the same architect, Michele Busiri Vici: Villa Bettina was the first villa ever built by the architect and Villa Guinness was one of the last. The in-depth close reading of these two buildings through typological analysis of the two villas will be carried out in conjunction with other alternative primary sources: on-site photographs and written material produced by the clients. This methodology is also aimed to put into question the hierarchy of the (male) architect archive as the main form of knowledge for these projects.
Bio
Michela is an architect and researcher.She completed her training in Architecture in the UK, where she then practiced at Foster Partners and Herzog & de Meuron, as well as through freelance projects in London, Mallorca and Milan. She is currently pursuing a PhD in History and Theory of Architecture at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL). Her doctoral research critically examines the proliferation of seaside holiday villas in Italy from the start of the 'Economic Miracle' to the first Oil Crisis.
As part of TPOD Lab (Theory and Project of Domestic Space), Michela supervises Master Thesis Projects and acts as one of the editors of Burning Farm Journal.She acted as PhD representative of the Doctoral School of Architecture - within the collective Quatre- between 2023 and 2025. In April 2023 she launched Doc. Days EDAR, a doctoral review seminar across different labs of the Doctoral School of Architecture.She has been invited as an external critic at the London Metropolitan University, the Architectural Association, and the University of Brighton. Her architectural work has been showcased at the Lisbon Triennale, AA Project Reviews, and Something Curated. Her writing has been published in Burning Farm, Dimensions Journal, and OASE.
Image: Villa Guinness, Sardinia (1973) © Roberto Faraone.
The story of one of the most elitist tourist resorts in Europe, Costa Smeralda in the North of Sardinia, has often been told from the point of view of male protagonists involved in its conception and construction. From Ismail Prince Karim Aga Kahn, who saw the real estate potential of purchasing parcels from local shepherds to the selected group of male architects (such as Luigi Vietti, Michele Busiri Vici, and Jacques Coüelle) employed to forge a new architectural identity.
Women have primarily been presented through the seductive performativity of their bodies, as in Slim Aarons’ photographs that cemented the ideology of the glamorous ‘Mediterranean holiday’. The tanned and objectified female body was instrumental not only in reinforcing the myths of the ‘Mediterraneanists [who] often fell back upon cliches (sun worship, human centeredness, the pleasure-loving life, even backwardness) to describe what made it different from other parts of the world,’– but also as a tourist marketing tool for the region and Italy as a whole.
This paper focuses on the story of two women: Simone Bodine, in art, Bettina Graziani (1925–2015), and Dolores Guinness (1936-2012), analyzing their tacit agency in the making of Costa Smeralda as well as their pioneering role in the evolution of the Sardinian coastline. Both women were not only photographed by Slim Aarons, but they also commissioned their holiday villa to the same architect, Michele Busiri Vici: Villa Bettina was the first villa ever built by the architect and Villa Guinness was one of the last. The in-depth close reading of these two buildings through typological analysis of the two villas will be carried out in conjunction with other alternative primary sources: on-site photographs and written material produced by the clients. This methodology is also aimed to put into question the hierarchy of the (male) architect archive as the main form of knowledge for these projects.
Bio
Michela is an architect and researcher.She completed her training in Architecture in the UK, where she then practiced at Foster Partners and Herzog & de Meuron, as well as through freelance projects in London, Mallorca and Milan. She is currently pursuing a PhD in History and Theory of Architecture at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL). Her doctoral research critically examines the proliferation of seaside holiday villas in Italy from the start of the 'Economic Miracle' to the first Oil Crisis.
As part of TPOD Lab (Theory and Project of Domestic Space), Michela supervises Master Thesis Projects and acts as one of the editors of Burning Farm Journal.She acted as PhD representative of the Doctoral School of Architecture - within the collective Quatre- between 2023 and 2025. In April 2023 she launched Doc. Days EDAR, a doctoral review seminar across different labs of the Doctoral School of Architecture.She has been invited as an external critic at the London Metropolitan University, the Architectural Association, and the University of Brighton. Her architectural work has been showcased at the Lisbon Triennale, AA Project Reviews, and Something Curated. Her writing has been published in Burning Farm, Dimensions Journal, and OASE.
Image: Villa Guinness, Sardinia (1973) © Roberto Faraone.
Links
Practical information
- General public
- Free
Organizer
- Pier Vittorio Aureli