Velarca, the houseboat opens to visit on Lake Como

The restoration was long, but, thanks to the support and commitment of the FAI, the Italian Environment Fund, a true masterpiece came out of it: the Velarchthe houseboat designed by Studio BBPR in 1959, moored in Ossuccio, Tremezzina, on Lake Como, opens to the public.

The name, Velarca, recalls, not by chance, that of the famous Torre Velasca, symbol of Milan: the architects who designed them are the same.

And this floating house was not just a summer refuge, but a special place imagined by Fiammetta and Emilio Norsa, the parents of Aldo who donated it to the FAI, intended to receive, welcome and bring together friends and acquaintances who already frequented their Milanese home, including great figures of Italian culturefrom Riccardo Sambonet to Gio Ponti, from Gillo Dorfles to Eugenio Montale, and then, again, Lucio Fontana, Umberto Eco, Cesare Musatti, and many others.

The history of the Velarca

And so the already very renowned (and very popular) Lake Como now has a new stage and a new story to tell. The Velarca was designed and built between 1959 and 1961 by the BBPR studio (composed by the Italian architects Gian Luigi Banfi, Lodovico Barbiano di Belgiojoso, Enrico Peressutti and Ernesto Nathan Rogers), commissioned by the couple Emilio and Fiammetta Norsa to create a floating home, in which to host family and friends. The BBPR when they accept this job have recently completed the construction of the Velasca Tower in Milan, a work that left its mark on international modern architecture. Velarca itself takes up the characteristics of the typical architecture of the Milanese studio in its forms and spaces.: attention to the environment, to the interpretation of the place, to the quality of the design and to the accuracy of the construction. To design it, the architects added a living space on the hull of an old 19-meter Larian gondola, the «Corriera Tremezzina», which since 1911 crossed Lake Como carrying goods and people.

“The Velarca”, he commented Marco MagnificentPresident of the FAI Italian Environment Fund, «is a sublime “caprice”, a small masterpiece of the 20th century, whimsical, bizarre, unrepeatable».

The restoration by FAI began in 2013 And It involved reconstruction, restoration, recovery and functional adaptation of the Velarcawhich required a very long time and huge resources, especially since the hull, unfortunately, due to the severe deterioration was not restorable and it was necessary to proceed with the reconstruction.

And now here it is, on the lake, waiting for visitors: from Thursday to Sunday, from 10:00 to 18:00 (last entry at 17:15), the visit to the Velarca It is accompanied by original podcasts and a video storybroadcast on a 60s TV, dedicated to the history of the houseboat.

Roberto Morelli

Roberto Morelli