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BEHIND THE DESIGN | ROOMS & GARDENS | WORLD OF CABANA
Exclusive: Rome-based designer Achille Salvagni, collector and founder of his eponymous studio, talks Cabana through his design process for two new openings from Le Graal: a member's club in an historic Roman palazzo and a hotel in the Dolomites.
INTERVIEW BY CAMILLA FRANCES | ROOMS & GARDENS | 27 MAY 2026
Fresco restoration at Palazzo Medici Clarelli, home to Le Graal Rome © Le Graal.
When describing his latest design projects in Rome and Cortina, Roman designer Achille Salvagni describes an immersive, involving process that deliberately avoids conventional mood boards. Instead of assembling images or references, Salvagni began with impressions that are "more sensory than visual": a fragment of light on stone, the texture of a surface shaped by time, or the particular sound, or lack thereof, of a favorite interior.
These elements gradually accumulate into what he describes as a "constellation" rather than a composition, forming an emotional structure that precedes any formal design. The 'mood board', if it exists, is a dialogue between materials, atmospheres, and references. "It is an emotional architecture before it becomes a physical one, most of the time far from architecture and interiors but more likely from other worlds," he tells Cabana.
Palazzo Medici Clarelli, home to Le Graal Rome, opening Spring 2027 © Le Graal.
Le Graal, comprising a much-anticipated new hotel in Cortina (opening in September) and members’ club in Rome (opening Spring 2027), has allowed Salvagni to express this philosophy. Each room in both properties will carry a subtle change in tone, he says, creating a sequence of discoveries where private and theatrical qualities coexist. "Le Graal presented a rare condition: the possibility to build not simply a place, but a world, and yet to create an identity which does not belong to a single character," he says.
The material language reflects this approach too. In Cortina, where the club engages with its setting in the Dolomites, traditional alpine imagery is deliberately avoided. Bas-reliefs depict contemporary skiers rather than folkloric mountain scenes, yet are executed using historical stucco techniques and chromatic references drawn from the 19th century. This combination seems to produce a dialogue between past and present, craft and subject, Salvagni notes. A similar strategy appears in the treatment of architectural detail, where elements typically associated with exterior façades — mouldings, proportions, and surface rhythms — are brought indoors and reinterpreted within interior spaces.
The terrace at Le Graal Cortina, designed by Achille Salvagni.
The result introduces a subtle inversion, where the expected boundaries between interior and exterior are reconfigured. Craft is central to the development of Le Graal and closely tied to the designer’s Roman atelier. The studio operates as a working environment where ideas move continuously between drawing and making. Each project begins with hand sketches and intuitive gestures, but only takes form through close collaboration with artisans.
Rome and Cortina define two expressions of the same project. In Cortina, the starting point is the alpine landscape, understood as a quiet, almost metaphysical presence. The Dolomites inform a restrained material palette where wood is refined rather than rustic, stone is polished, and metals are used to capture light. References range from vernacular alpine architecture to Italian modernism of the 1950s. Rome introduces a different register shaped by the city’s history and inherent theatricality. The design – Le Graal Rome sits within an historic palazzo – draws on both Renaissance architecture and the atmosphere of the 1960s and 70s, "when Rome carried a sense of sophistication, international influence, and subtle decadence".
Speaking exclusively to Cabana, Achille Salvagni reflects further on the project, sharing behind-the-scenes insights, challenges and unique details and craftsmanship.
Bedroom designed by Achille Salvagni at the soon-to-open Le Graal, Cortina.
How did Rome and the Dolomites inform your schemes for these projects?
"In Rome, the challenge was to translate a Renaissance palace, with its monumental volumes, into a place that could be intimate and comfortable without losing its sense of authority. To achieve this, I worked on differentiating scales: within the club, rooms unfold through a continuous sequence of compressions and dilations, creating a rhythm that is emotional as well as spatial. Thus, from more secluded areas with lower ceilings and intimate proportions, one suddenly enters the two grand salons, the formal dining room, or the main suite – where heights become monumental. The result evokes a contemporary club housed within a Roman Patrician Palazzo: an environment that reconciles historical stratification and private life, monumentality and warmth, surprise and intimacy. An elegant refuge, designed to be lived in.
"Cortina is very different from what one might expect from a traditional alpine hotel. I wanted to move away from the cliché of the rustic chalet or memory of mountain lodges: my goal was to create a place closer to the elegance of grand mountain hotels, where hospitality feels fresh and not stiffened by folkloric traditions. The idea was that of a sort of “Austrian house”, where eclecticism and serenity coexist with warm materials typical of the region. Wood, stucco, fabrics and patinas tell stories of the past, but without ever becoming fake or didactic. I sought to reinterpret ancient gestures and details with irony and lightness, translating them into a contemporary concept of comfort."
Bedroom designed by Achille Salvagni at the soon-to-open Le Graal, Cortina.
Were there any architectural or decorative challenges you had to overcome?
"Working within historical structures always implies a form of negotiation. One must listen carefully before intervening. The challenge is not to impose, but to reveal, to understand where the architecture already speaks, and where it allows for a new voice. Restraint, in this sense, becomes a creative act. It is often what one chooses not to do that defines the final balance."
How did you begin your career as a designer?
"Almost by necessity. I was drawn to spaces long before I understood design as a discipline. Architecture, initially, gave me a structure – a way to think – but it was through interiors and objects that I found a more personal language. It was not a single moment, but a gradual alignment between instinct and practice."
What does good design mean to you?
"Good design is silent. It does not seek attention, yet it remains. It is a form of balance, between proportion, material, function and emotion, where nothing feels excessive, yet nothing is missing. Above all, it must have a sense of inevitability, as if it could not have been otherwise."
Your dream interiors in three words?
Ironically-measured, layered, inevitable.
Your nightmare interiors in three words?
Literal, loud, forgettable.
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