Napoléon’s Onetime Italian Retreat Plays Host to a Unique New Installation

Where did Napoléon get his thrills?

This week in Milan, Caesarstone has partnered with London-based designer Philippe Malouin to imagine a splendid indoor playground for the madcap conqueror. In a two-part exhibition called “Movements,” a series of funky planters and a monolithic swing set take up residence in the baroque Palazzo Serbelloni, which once served as Bonaparte’s Milanese retreat.

Malouin spent a month reimagining the brand's quartz surfaces, used mainly for countertops, at a stone manufacturing plant in France, grinding, carving, inlaying, and stacking the stuff into sculptural vessels and pots. And for the swing set in the great hall next door—inspired by Isamu Noguchi’s modernist playground in Atlanta—Malouin took the ubiquitous plaything out of the urban landscape and plopped it in the palazzo’s magnificent great hall, allowing visitors to soar amid marble, molding, and mirrors.

Through April 18 at Palazzo Serbelloni, Corso Venezia 16, Milan; caesarstoneuom

* *