Scenographic interior design · Art Café · Villa Borghese · Rome
The backlit goblets.
For Art Café in Villa Borghese — a historic nightclub of the Roman nightlife on Via Veneto — we built the monumental backlit goblets in fibreglass and plaster that divide the VIP privé areas from the Chesterfield sofas.
Behind the scenes
Fibreglass + LEDs,
three functions in one.
The goblets are not simple statues, but tool-objects with three overlapping functions: scenography, lighting, division of space. Each function shapes the building technique.
The fibreglass skeleton
The outer structure is in layered fibreglass over a core of sculpted expanded polystyrene. The decorative relief of the embossed details is in plaster applied over the fibreglass and then lacquered. The burnished silver finish is achieved with metallic glazes, alternating light and burnished areas to deliver the ancient oxidised chalice effect.
The internal lighting
The central basin is in opalescent plexiglass, a semi-transparent plastic that diffuses light evenly without making it sting the eyes. Inside is a ring of cold-toned or colour-shifting LEDs — neon, blue, cool white — driven by the venue's lighting desk. They are light fixtures in every respect, calibrated for windowless interiors.
The VIP dividers
Placed strategically beside the metallic-leather Chesterfield sofas, the goblets work as elegant barriers: they mark off VIP areas and reserved tables from the rest of the public flow, guaranteeing privacy while staying integrated into the overall design. A scenographic interior solution that avoids closed walls and visible security ropes.
~2 m
the height of the monumental goblets, column base included
LED
cold and colour-shifting tones driven by the venue's lighting desk
Villa Borghese
the underground commercial gallery between Via Veneto and the park
Pieces installed
The goblets in service,
in the rooms of the venue.
Photos from our Drive archive showing the goblets in place across the different areas of the club — dance floor, privé area, passages between Chesterfields, VIP entrance.
Second life
Scenographic interiors
for nightclubs.
Scenographic interior design for nightclubs is a craft halfway between set design and interior design: it uses scenographic sculpting techniques (fibreglass, polystyrene, plaster) to solve problems of permanent furnishing in heavy-use commercial spaces. The Art Café goblets are a small masterpiece of this technical crossover.
The same techniques come back in our commissions for private installations and events, in the Lavazza commercial with its hanging gilded bells, in the pawn-piece columns of Luneur Park: scenography-objects that play a double role (lighting + ornament, division + figure) in high-traffic public spaces.
Tech sheet
All production data
- Type
- Permanent scenographic interior for a nightclub · monumental backlit goblets with a double function (light fixture + space divider)
- Client
- Art Café Roma · historic nightclub of Rome's nightlife
- Location
- Underground commercial gallery of Villa Borghese · near Via Veneto · central Rome
- Pieces built
- Set of monumental chalice goblets around 2 m tall · column base · embossed metallic rims · luminous central section
- Techniques
- Layered fibreglass over an expanded polystyrene core · hand-sculpted plaster for the decorative reliefs · opalescent plexiglass in the central section for light diffusion · silver and burnished metallic glazed finish · chromatic gems painted to imitate set stones
- Lighting
- A ring of cold-toned or colour-shifting LEDs inside the basin of the chalice (neon, blue, cool white) · driven by the venue's lighting desk
- Double function
- Light fixtures: they break the darkness of the windowless underground space and define the boundaries of the areas without dazzling · VIP dividers: they mark off reserved table and privé zones from the main passage, guaranteeing privacy without creating closed barriers
- Surrounding interior
- Metallic-leather Chesterfield sofas · metallic marble tables · lustre-tiled floors · smaller hanging goblet-style ceiling lamps
- Style
- Neo-classical fantasy · reliefs imitating embossed ancient chalices and mythological braziers · burnished silver metallic finish · set chromatic gems
- Our role
- Complete fabrication of the scenographic interior — sculpting, stiffening, plaster reliefs, polychrome metallic finish, mounting of the opalescent plexiglass and internal LEDs, on-site installation
- Second life
- Permanent installation · the goblets are still today part of the identity of the venue, photographed by guests and part of the club's communication