In Palazzo Lancia, in the Parioli district, the home-studio of architect Alessandra Vitale welcomed Vicode for two days dedicated to design, craftsmanship and the relationship between objects and space.
There are homes that tell stories about those who live in them. Others can also transform, opening up to new encounters and allowing architecture, material, and objects to build a narrative together.
23–24 May 2026
Open House Roma
Palazzo Lancia, viale dei Parioli 124
Studio Vitale and Vicode
For Open House Roma 2026, Alessandra Vitale's home-studio opened its doors to the public. For two days, the domestic spaces were transformed into an exhibition suite, without losing the intimate and lived-in character of the home.
Not a traditional exhibition, therefore, but a journey in which interior architecture, ceramics, and contemporary design could be observed within a real context.
The event was part of the fourteenth edition of Open House Roma, the event that annually allows the public to visit studios, homes, buildings, and architecture in the Capital that are normally inaccessible.
A Home-Studio above Rome
Reaching the penthouses of Palazzo Lancia meant gradually moving away from the rhythm of the city and entering a more intimate space, suspended above Parioli.
The building was designed as a complex capable of accommodating different functions. On the ground floor were the spaces related to Lancia's Roman headquarters, while garages, workshops, and offices occupied the back areas. The upper floors were designated for residences.
Today, in one of the highest apartments, home and workplace coexist in Alessandra Vitale's studio. The spaces retain the private dimension of living, but at the same time reveal the architect's research: materials, light, furnishings, and artworks contribute to building the identity of each room.
During Open House Roma, this relationship between daily life and design became the starting point for the entire installation.
An Installation Designed to Be Explored
Vicode intervened in the spaces without altering their balance and without transforming the home into an impersonal exhibition space.
Each ceramic and object was placed seeking a relationship with what was already present: a shelf, a painting, a book, a light, or the surface of a piece of furniture.
The pieces therefore did not appear as elements added for the occasion, but as presences that could have always belonged to the life of the house. This was the meaning of Atelier between Architecture and Material.
Not a sequence of products, but a composition in which each object contributed to defining the atmosphere of the space.
Architecture offered objects a new depth. At the same time, the presence of ceramics allowed interiors to be observed from different perspectives, bringing out juxtapositions, proportions, and details often overlooked in everyday life.
Material as Presence
Ceramics played a central role in the exhibition. Irregular surfaces, glazes, manual impressions, and small variations made each piece unique.
Placed among books, artworks, furnishings, and personal objects, they did not need to be isolated to attract attention. They emerged precisely through dialogue with their surroundings.
Alongside the collections selected by Vicode, there were also Malles ceramics, made according to the tradition of the women of Sejnane, in northern Tunisia.
The essential forms and fire-marked surfaces brought an ancient and profoundly human material into the home. The contrast with the urban and elegant context of Parioli did not create a distance: instead, it generated a new balance.
The installation showed how a handcrafted object can be integrated into a contemporary interior without losing its identity. Not just as decoration, but as a testament to a place, a technique, and the hands that continue to pass it down.
The Attic, a Suspended Space
The journey culminated in the attic of Palazzo Lancia. Here, the language of the installation became freer, more abstract, and evocative.
The roof slopes, shadows, and natural light contributed to creating an atmosphere separate from the rest of the house. Malles ceramics took on the character of silent presences, almost suspended in space.
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 architectural structure.
It was the most intimate point of the journey and perhaps the one where the meaning of the entire project emerged with the greatest clarity.
Atelier between Architecture and Material, in images
The rooms of the home-studio, the Vicode installation, and some moments of the Open House Roma days at Palazzo Lancia.
Scroll the photo right or left.
Two Days of Encounters
The days of May 23rd and 24th were intense and well-attended. Numerous visitors passed through the home-studio's rooms, lingering over the objects, observing architectural details, and engaging in dialogue with those who had contributed to the project's realization.
For Vicode, it was a valuable opportunity to meet an attentive public, talk about the origin of the pieces, and share the research work that precedes each selection.
The interest received confirmed how important it is to present objects in contexts capable of showing not only their form, but also their possible relationship with daily life.
A ceramic piece observed alone tells its own material story. Placed in a home, next to a book, on a shelf, or under a specific light, it also begins to tell a story about a way of living.
Designing Relationships
Atelier between Architecture and Matter was more than a temporary exhibition. It was an experiment on living and on the ability of objects to modify the perception of a space.
The home-studio did not lose its identity to become an exhibition. On the contrary, it was its lived-in dimension that made the experience special.
For Vicode, participating in Open House Roma meant bringing its vision into a place capable of representing it: selecting objects with a story and placing them in environments where they can create relationships, generate emotions, and continue to tell the story of those who made them.
At the end of the two days, the encounters, conversations, and images of a home traversed by many people remained.
But above all, one certainty remained: when architecture and matter engage in dialogue with sensitivity, objects do not merely furnish a space.
They make it unique.
