The ideal house opens inside Emile Sala’s villa bank in Arles
On the edge of its historic Mediterranean city ArlVilla Bank becomes the first address for Casa Ideale, a new hospitality project by Luca Pronzato and We are Ona. The 1970s house, designed by Émile Sala, sets the tone from the start with curved volumes, pale surfaces, a swimming pool and rooms that seem to move between the interior and the exterior landscape.
Casa Ideale begins as a pop-up hotel from 1 to 10 July 2026, during the opening week of Les Rencontres de la Photographie, before continuing with report Preface until October. Guests will stay inside the villa, eat at a restaurant led by chef Gil Nogueira, and move through a house designed as both a living space and a cultural environment.
images © Laurent Yannesini
a habitable cultural project
Luca Pronzatoroute to Ideal home it comes through the food, but the work extends far beyond the table. After establishment We are Ona in 2019, he built a platform around temporary restaurants placed within unexpected architectural environments, often timed with art and design weeks in cities such as Venice, Milan, Arles, Miami, Hong Kong and New York.
For Casa Ideale, this temporary energy moves into a more domestic context. The project is described as the first chapter of a future collection of villas and living spaces, with Villa Bank acting as the pilot director. It sits somewhere between a guest house, an exhibition space, a culinary residence and an editorial platform, structured around stays, private dining and cultural programming.
Villa Bank becomes the first address for Casa Ideale in Arles
photography and design occupy the rooms
The opening exhibition, Prologue, is organized by Sozzani Foundation and edited by Madalena Scarzellabringing to the villa more than sixty photographs from the Carla Sozzani collection. Figure works incl Urs Lüthi and Helmut Newton enter the rooms next to pieces selected from Downtown+ by Luna Laffanour stoaturning the house into what the project calls a sequence of “vision rooms.”
The choice of design gives the house its lively intensity. A hinged one of the Headquarters The DS-600 sofa curves around a cone Max Sauze fireplace, while Pierre ChapoThe T21 round table sits in the dining room. Elsewhere, Jean Prouvé, Gaetano Pesce, Etore Sotsas, Philippe Starckand Wendy Andreu they appear through beds, armchairs, lamps, mirrors and sculptural furniture that give the villa the feel of a residential collection.
1970s villa opens as pop-up hotel during Les Rencontres de la Photographie
a house designed for cultural stays
Villa Bank gives the form a strong architectural principle. Designed in the early 1970s by Émile Sala and recognized in the architectural heritage of 20th century France, the house is described through its meta-organic language, with soft geometries and fluid volumes pressing against the surrounding garden.
Casa Ideale comes at a time when hospitality projects increasingly borrow from the logic of exhibitions, residences and membership clubs, while cultural projects seek settings beyond the gallery. In Arles, this change takes the form of a house where the photograph hangs near a fireplace, dinner becomes part of the program and the architecture holds the whole experiment without turning it into a branded hotel.
Luca Pronzato brings We Are Ona to a more permanent form of hosting
the project combines residential exhibitions private dinners and culinary residences
