Renzo Mongiardino’s daring take
on the Kulm Hotel
Celebrating the arts and crafts of the past in unparalleled poetry, his architectural creations were crafted for an international elite clientele – composed of the likes of Princess Lee Radziwill or the Rothschild, Versace and Agnelli dynasties – and have therefore predominantly remained in the private realm. His commission, nearly 30 years ago, for the entrance and lobby of the Kulm Hotel in St. Moritz stands out as one of the master’s few projects to be open to a broader audience, all the while still harbouring secrets to be told.
Stepping into the Kulm Hotel is assuredly never a trifling affair. In the purest grand hotel tradition, both its entrance and lobby have always served as crucial crossroads for the intermingling lives unfolding within the sprawling building, hosting either informal or business meetings, impromptu gatherings, or administrative duties. Here, perhaps more than anywhere else, these central spaces distinctively entertain with stories, legends, as well as a certain kind of magic belonging to both past and present in unrivalled stately style.
It is the subtle art of Lorenzo ‘Renzo’ Mongiardino that is at play here and has been since 1997, when the architect completed the two rooms, only a few years before his passing and at the end of an undeniably prolific career led from his Milan practice.
After completing highly notable work for both film and stage sets earlier in his career – his first collaborators included directors Franco Zeffirelli and Gian Carlo Menotti – the architect went on to singlehandedly design sets for household names La Fenice and La Scala, working on star-studded operas and ballets such as Tosca and Nureyev’s Nutcracker.
Genoa-born Mongiardino achieved further recognition by completing an eclectic array of private projects in his clients’ favoured destinations, from countryside follies to apartments nestled in the world’s bustling capitals. While his work for the Kulm isn’t his sole realisation in the Engadin – he was notably enlisted by Marella Agnelli for designing Chesa Alcyon in the Suvretta hills – this project is nonetheless highly significant as one of his last productions at an already advanced age and has been preserved in pristine condition by the hotel throughout the years.
Although on a more modest scale, the architect also completed both bars for New York’s Carlyle and Rome’s Grand Hotel Plaza, all setting prestigious precedents for the now-popular practice of innovative collaborations between esteemed designers and iconic hotel institutions the world over.
Mongiardino’s masterful use of ancestral techniques in both eccentric and historicist style seems to have found a perfect home in the generously proportioned, palatial hotel entrance. In a final nod to the past at age eighty, the architect envisioned for the double-height room a series of striking light-toned intarsia trompe-l’œil framed in matching timber pilasters. The panels, with their successive and mesmerising illusions of both depth and light, transform the entire room into an awe-inspiring narrative. This bold choice of ornamentation allowed him to play freely with a variety of rich essences of wood as well as with the intricate art of perspective drawing, depicting villages and interior scenes simultaneously reminiscent of Engadin pastoral life and, more incongruously, lush Palladian architecture.
Mongiardino’s fascination with the pictorial and technical feats found in this technique, favoured by the great Renaissance masters and craftsmen he revered, was sparked by his discovery of the studiolo in Gubbio’s Palazzo Ducale, an impressive fifteenth-century panelled room built as a connoisseur’s study for nobleman Federico da Montefeltro. Although used more sparingly, other instances of this technique can be found in the architect’s existing body of work, such as in the astonishing Manhattan ‘Casa Sharp’ or in Elsa Peretti’s home set in the Tuscan hills. At the Kulm, the panels are paired with plush carpeting as well as carved upholstered chairs wittily clustered around a daily schedule of the neighbouring Cresta Run, displayed for the attention of its members, long-time habitués of the hotel.
After ascending a flight of wide steps, one is transported into a new, contrasting atmosphere, evoking the fantastic world of a fine medieval Gobelins tapestry. The visitor is gently enveloped in successive layers of rich gold and red brocade, crowned by large chandeliers that wouldn’t look out of place at Versailles. Mongiardino’s distinctive maximalist patterns, applied with rigorous precision, are playfully applied to pilasters, draperies and walls alike, blending seamlessly as if by magic with the deep coffered ceiling and monumental mantelpieces – themselves worthy of the most lavish Roman palazzi. The architect’s fondness for the bizarre and extraordinary, evident in much of his work, is subtly reflected here in an abundance of small, quirky details: mysterious portrait sitters and wrought-iron armories appear to be under a magic spell. There is indeed a sorcery at play here, with the Italian master as its ultimate conductor. Even on the darkest winter days, the stained-glass ceiling floods the vast room with an incomparable brightness, while the dominant warm tones are accentuated by the glow of an open fire, accompanied by the soft clinking of cups on silver platters.
Shielded from the street outside, the ballet of white jackets swarming in and out through swinging doors fitted with portholes adds to the precise and harmonious rhythm that defines teatime at the Kulm. This golden lobby ultimately finds its focal point in the three large bay windows that open out onto the grand, tranquil lake below. It is right here, seated in those regal armchairs and through this singular historic lens towards the large southern vistas of the Upper Engadin valley, that one feels truly at the heart of an exceptional landscape.
While Swiss craftsmanship is celebrated through the ornate millwork and an undeniable Italianate feeling reigns, there is also an abundant Britishness presiding over the room, evoking the unmistakable aura infused by the earliest members of St. Moritz’s international and bustling society.
There is no doubt that one the Kulm’s enduring marvels of the Kulm are these well-preserved, authentic Mongiardino rooms. They play host daily to both a renewed and habitual society, holding at their heart the creative aura of a bygone master who has influenced a whole knowledgeable and cultured generation up to the present day. Standing still as one of Mongiardino’s last project, these rooms, at the centre of the complex and captivating scheme that is the Kulm Hotel, perpetually help to valorise this fascinating artistic legacy as well as the noblest traditions of hospitality.
Cécile Christmann is a Paris-based architect, interior designer and curator for publisher Assouline, as well as a writer and artistic director. A keen traveller, she regularly writes on hotels, buildings and cities, focusing on both architecture, characters and history.