At Palazzo Lancia, architect Alessandra Vitale's home-studio hosted Vicode for two days dedicated to design, craftsmanship, and the relationship between objects and space.
There are homes that tell the story of their inhabitants. Others even manage to transform, opening up to new encounters and allowing architecture, material, and objects to build a narrative together.
This is what happened on May 23 and 24, 2026, when, on the occasion of Open House Rome, architect Alessandra Vitale's home-studio opened its doors to the public inside Palazzo Lancia, in the Parioli district.
For two days, the space was transformed into a true exhibition suite: not a traditional exhibition, but a domestic and sensory journey in which interior architecture met contemporary design and the authentic value of craftsmanship.
The event was part of the fourteenth edition of Open House Rome, the festival that annually allows visitors to discover places, professional studios, homes, and architectures of the Capital city usually inaccessible to the public. The 2026 edition involved over 220 sites, interpreting Rome as a living and continuously transforming organism.
A Home-Studio Above Rome
Reaching the penthouse floors of Palazzo Lancia, at Viale dei Parioli 124, meant gradually entering a more intimate and suspended dimension, far from the city's rhythm.
The building has a unique history. Born as one of the first multi-functional complexes in the capital, it was designed to house the Roman headquarters of Lancia: the ground floor hosted the dealership, while garages, workshops, and offices were located in the backyard. The upper floors, instead, were intended for residences.
Today, one of the apartments on the penthouse floors houses Alessandra Vitale's studio.
Home and workplace coexist without rigid separation. The spaces retain the private dimension of living, but simultaneously reveal the architect's research: a sensitive design, capable of connecting space, material, and the identity of those who inhabit it.
During Open House Rome, this relationship became the starting point for the entire exhibition.
An Exhibition to Explore
Vicode curated the exhibition of the home-studio, intervening in the spaces with respect, without overshadowing the architecture and without transforming the rooms into a simple exhibition space.
Each object was chosen and placed so that it could establish a connection with its surroundings: a piece of furniture, a wall, a light, a perspective, or a material already present in the house.
The ceramics, design objects, and pieces selected by Vicode thus entered the spaces naturally. They did not appear as elements added for the occasion, but as presences belonging to the life of the house.
This was precisely the meaning of Space Atelier: a dialogue between architecture and matter.
Not a succession of products, but a composition in which each element contributed to defining the overall atmosphere. Objects acquired new depth through architecture and, at the same time, allowed the interiors to be observed from a different perspective.
The official presentation of Open House Rome, in fact, described the space as an "exhibition suite" capable of simultaneously narrating the history of the building, the interior design project, and the relationship between Vicode design and the home-studio.
Matter as Presence
Within the spaces, ceramics took on a central role.
Irregular surfaces, glazes, manual marks, and small variations made each piece unique. Placed among books, artworks, furnishings, and personal objects, the ceramics did not need to be isolated to attract attention: they emerged through their dialogue with the space.
Alongside the collections selected by Vicode, there were also Malles ceramics, made according to the ancient tradition of the women of Sejnane, Tunisia.
Their essential forms and fire-molded surfaces brought an ancient, imperfect, and deeply human material into the home. Their presence created an intense contrast with the urban and elegant context of Parioli, but it was precisely from this encounter that a new harmony emerged.
Vicode aimed to show how a handmade object can find its place even in the most contemporary interiors, without losing its identity. Not as a simple decoration, but as a testament to knowledge, a territory, and hands that continue to pass on a gesture.
The Attic, a Suspended Space
The journey culminated in the attic of Palazzo Lancia.
Here, the language of the exhibition became freer, more abstract, and evocative. The particular configuration of the space, the roof's inclinations, and the light contributed to creating a secluded atmosphere, almost separated from the rest of the house.
In the attic, the objects and Malles ceramics took on the character of silent presences. The forms dialogued with shadows and architecture, giving life to a more experimental and sensory composition.
It was no longer just about observing individual pieces, but about perceiving the whole: the distances, the voids, the light on the surfaces, and the relationship between the raw material of the ceramics and the structure of the space.
It was the most intimate point of the journey and, perhaps, the one where the meaning of the entire project emerged with the greatest force.
Two Days of Encounters
The days of May 23 and 24 were intense and well-attended.
Numerous visitors passed through the rooms of the home-studio, lingering over objects, observing architectural details, and conversing with those who had contributed to the project's realization.
For Vicode, it was a valuable opportunity to meet an attentive and curious public, to explain the origin of the pieces, and to share the research work that precedes each selection.
The interest received confirmed how important it is to present objects within contexts capable of showing not only their form but also their possible relationship with daily life.
A ceramic observed alone tells its own story of material. Placed in a home, next to a book, on a shelf, or under a specific light, it begins to tell a way of living.
The success of the initiative stemmed precisely from the convergence of different but complementary sensitivities: Alessandra Vitale's interior design project, Vicode's research, and the architectural identity of Palazzo Lancia.
Designing Relationships
Atelier between Architecture and Material was much more than a temporary exhibition.
It was an experiment on living, on the ability of objects to transform the perception of a space, and on the possibility of bringing the public closer to design through an authentic experience.
The home-studio did not lose its identity to become an exhibition. On the contrary, it was precisely its lived-in dimension that made the journey special.
For Vicode, participating in Open House Rome meant bringing its vision into a place capable of representing it: selecting objects with a soul and placing them in environments where they could establish relationships, generate emotions, and continue to tell the story of those who created them.
At the end of the two days, what remained were the encounters, conversations, and images of a home visited by so many people.
But above all, a certainty remained: when architecture and material dialogue with sensitivity, objects do not merely furnish a space.
They make it unique.
Project and exhibition: Studio Vitale and Vicode
PR and communication: Antonia Marmo
Photographs: © Lucia Caputo
Location: Palazzo Lancia, Viale dei Parioli 124, Rome
Dates: May 23–24, 2026
