Nilufar Sets up Shop in Italian Art Deco Airport

In global design circles, Nilufar is a familiar name. The Milan, Italy–based gallery, founded by Nina Yashar in 1979, has long been a major staple of the city’s burgeoning furniture and products scene, a regular stop on the itinerary of anyone coming to town for the annual Salone del Mobile fair. Beginning with a focus on textiles from her parents’ native Iran, Yashar’s gallery has branched out to become a major purveyor of postwar Italian design, as well as work from a who’s who of international creatives. In tandem with its expanded offerings, Nilufar has extended its reach outside Italy, putting in appearances at venues abroad including art and design fairs such as PAD in London and NOMAD in Monaco.

“I really like the idea that my pieces can travel and adapt to different places and locations,” Nashar says.

The Venice Biennale is more than just the Arsenale and the central pavilion. We want to provide a platform for cultural and artistic activity throughout the year.

Now, after four successful decades in Milan, the gallerist is setting up a permanent out-of-town outpost: Timed to the preview week of the 59th Venice Biennale, Nilufar has just debuted a satellite showroom in the island city, located on the Lido, the slender strip of land to the east of La Serenissima that separates it from the sea.

“I’ve always desired an itinerant approach,” Nashar says. “Doing it in Venice, and specifically in the setting of Lido, is an unprecedented gift.”

The new Nilufar shop is no ordinary design gallery. Its new home at the Venice-Lido Airport (also known as Giovanni Nicelli Airport, after a prominent World War I Italian flying ace) was designed by architect Mario Emmer in 1926, and now stands as one of the few pre-WWII airfields to survive extensive allied bombing in the region. Today, it serves a select clientele, welcoming the private planes of well-heeled guests attending events like the Biennale and its assorted sister shows in architecture, film, and dance. It is, to put it mildly, an extraordinary space; a minor masterpiece of streamlined Moderne, complete with delicate brick details and ship-like portal windows, the building is an unsung standout in a locale better known for its Gothic palaces and Baroque churches. Inside, it still features authentic period elements like a map of Europe showing the array of routes from the early days of aviation, back when it took two or three stops to reach London.

Protected under local landmarks laws, Nilufar has left the interior entirely intact, occupying a suite of spaces in the central lobby of the airport with a secondary gallery in an adjacent structure that once served as a gas station.

“I wanted to create a domestic environment that felt naturally like home,” Yashar says.

Her focus on comfort makes the space an unusual (and commercially canny) hybrid. In effect, the design company has provided Nicelli with an exceptionally luxurious business-class lounge, a place for tony travelers to await their departures and then, if they choose, purchase any of the furniture they’ve just seen or sat upon. Together with the airport’s first-rate restaurant, Nilufar has turned the space into a genuine destination just 20 minutes by vaporetto from the Piazza San Marco.

To herald the gallery’s arrival, Yashar and her team have put together an inaugural show that features work that both highlights the depth and breadth of its offerings while reflecting the singular character of its new surrounds. Low-backed sofas from Joaquim Tenreiro, upholstered in crisp emerald green, sit beneath a brass-clad chandelier from Analogia Project, while an architecturally themed rug by designer Martino Gamper complements white bouclé-backed lounge chairs from the 1950s collective BBPR. There’s lighting from architect and industrial designer Gio Ponti, table-top sculptures from Pietro Consagra, and—in an uncanny collision of artistry and aeronautics—an installation of exquisite, oversized porcelain vases by artist Sin Ying Cassandra Ho—her European solo debut—in the gas station annex, with a clear view to the active runway just outside.

Ultimately, the Nilufar team hopes that the airport will serve as more than just a place for selling furniture. Laura Alfieri, tapped by Nashar as the new space’s artistic director, explains that the decision to open during the Biennale was a deliberate bid to put the gallery, the airport, and indeed the whole of Lido into a new kind of relationship with the art and design mega-events that regularly crowd the old city, while so rarely crossing the lagoon.

“The Venice Biennale is more than just the Arsenale and the central pavilion,” Alfieri says. “We want to provide a platform for cultural and artistic activity throughout the year.”