Ten minutes outside Arles, a 1970s villa has become a guest house among Carla Sozzani’s photography collection and furniture by some of the defining names in 20th-century design. Casa Ideale occupies Villa Bank, the 350-square-meter house designed by French Architect Émile Sala between 1971 and 1973, with five bedrooms, a garden, terrace and swimming pool.
The address is the first chapter of Casa Ideale, the hospitality project created by Luca Pronzato, Founder of the traveling culinary platform WE ARE ONA. Rather than turning Villa Bank into a conventional hotel, Pronzato has kept the house at the center of the experience. Guests live with its architecture, photography, and collectible furniture, while dinners and cultural programming change around them.
Inside Émile Sala’s Villa Bank
Émile Sala designed Villa Bank for the Bank family in the early 1970s. Curved walls and volumes define the interiors, while large openings connect the rooms with the garden. Today, the villa is recognized as part of France’s 20th-century architectural heritage.
Luna Laffanour, Founder of Paris gallery Downtown+, selected collectible pieces for the villa. A de Sede DS-600 modular sofa curves around the fireplace, while Pierre Chapo’s T21 table sits in the dining room. Furniture by Jean Prouvé, Gaetano Pesce, Ettore Sottsass, Philippe Starck and Joseph Savina appears throughout the guest house.
67 Photographs From Carla Sozzani’s Collection
Prologue is Casa Ideale’s first Photography Exhibition. Created with Fondazione Sozzani and curated by its Curator Maddalena Scarzella, the Prologue Photography exhibition places 67 photographs from Carla Sozzani’s collection throughout Villa Bank. The selection includes work by Helmut Newton, Irving Penn, Sarah Moon and Urs Lüthi.
There is no separate gallery room. Photographs hang through the spaces where guests sleep, eat and spend the day, alongside the furniture selected by Downtown+. Scarzella conceived the installation as a series of visual rooms, allowing photography, furniture and Sala’s architecture to change how each is seen.
Prologue remains on view through October 2026, extending the project well past the opening week of Les Rencontres d’Arles.
WE ARE ONA Brings Dinner Into the House
Casa Ideale also gives WE ARE ONA a permanent architectural setting after years of staging temporary restaurants and chef-led dinners around international cultural events. For its first Arles chapter, Chef Gil Nogueira leads the kitchen, with dinners forming part of the program at Villa Bank.
