In Venezia, there are palazzi that remain part of the urban landscape while eluding the gaze of those walking through calli and campielli. Their presence can be read in the façades, on maps, in the names of the rive, but the experience of their interiors almost always remains private. From September 11 to October 3, 2026, Palazzo Ca’ Donà, in the sestiere of Santa Croce, temporarily breaks with this custom: the residence will be open to the public for the inaugural event of ORBITA, a cultural platform conceived by the studio ETEREO.
The initiative centres on an exhibition format that uses a residence, rather than a gallery or a museum, as an active narrative framework. Contemporary art and collectible design find their place within the rooms of Ca’ Donà, in a dialogue that includes works by Lucio Fontana and Gio Ponti. The project does not, therefore, offer a neutral container in which to line up works and objects: domestic architecture, with its proportions, decorations, and layering of uses, directly informs the design of the visitor experience.
For a city that thrives on the continuous interplay of inhabited heritage, hospitality, and major cultural events, the temporary opening of a private home carries a significance that goes beyond the event's calendar. It brings to light a portion of the city that is normally inaccessible, entrusting it, for a few weeks, to an audience interested in the relationships between space, collecting, and interior design.
A residence as temporary cultural infrastructure
Palazzo Ca’ Donà predates the ORBITA initiative and was not conceived as a permanent exhibition venue. It is precisely this condition that defines the character of the project. The rooms maintain their residential identity, while the works are called to engage with a scale, light, and density of detail different from those of a purpose-built exhibition space. The intended outcome is not the transformation of the palazzo into a white cube, but the activation of a dialogue between what already exists and what is temporarily introduced.
In this scenario, collectible design is not treated as mere furnishing. It is placed alongside artworks and architecture as an autonomous language, capable of impacting the use and perception of the rooms. The encounter with names such as Fontana and Ponti also situates the initiative along an Italian lineage where art, architecture, decoration, and design production have often shared spaces and commissions, disregarding the rigid separations that define disciplines, markets, and institutions today.
This approach also calls for caution: a historic residence cannot be read as an indistinct backdrop or as an opportunity to add objects to a prestigious interior. The value of the opening will depend on the ability to make the relationship between contemporary presences, historicized works, and the specific features of Ca’ Donà legible. In other words, the palazzo is not merely the backdrop for the event, but one of its materials.
The debut of ORBITA and the strategy of ETEREO
ORBITA was conceived by ETEREO, an architecture and interior design studio with offices in Milano and Dubai. For founders Stefania Digregorio and Mirko Sala Tenna, the work on Ca’ Donà predated the definition of the platform: from their encounter with the house, the idea emerged for a project capable of fostering a dialogue between private residences, art, and collectible design.
The decision to present ORBITA in Venezia aligns with a city where access to interiors represents a crucial part of the cultural experience. Museums, foundations, open-to-the-public palazzi, and temporary venues coexist with a widespread heritage that remains closed or is revealed only on limited occasions. An itinerant program seeking to enter these architectural spaces can offer a different perspective compared to conventional exhibition formats, but it must contend with the fragility of the sites, their residential function, and inevitably tighter access constraints.
In the case of Ca’ Donà, the timeframe is limited to just over three weeks. This is enough time to establish a precise fixture on the Venetian calendar, but not enough to assimilate the palazzo into cultural venues that are permanently open. This boundary matters: the exceptional nature of the opening is part of the endeavor, rather than a promise of new, ongoing public access to the city's private heritage.
ETEREO describes ORBITA as an international and itinerant platform. The ambition is therefore to continue the format beyond the first Venetian chapter, moving through other residential contexts and new configurations between architecture, contemporary art and design. At the moment, however, the available information concerns the event at Palazzo Ca’ Donà; no further locations or dates have been indicated.
Venezia beyond the major exhibition model
The lagoon city is accustomed to hosting exhibitions in buildings with a strong personality: palazzi overlooking the canals, converted industrial complexes, foundations born from private collections, and institutional venues. ORBITA fits into this ecosystem from a more domestic position. It does not focus on the scale of a major exhibition, but on the possibility of entering an environment that retains a direct relationship with living spaces and with the family history of the palazzo.
For Breaking City, this aspect is central. Cities are not transformed solely by new architecture, infrastructure and urban plans; they also change when existing buildings acquire, for a defined period, a different public use. In the Venetian case, the operation restores attention to a heritage that coincides neither with the main tourist flows nor with the best-known contemporary art venues. Santa Croce, while part of the city's central geography, maintains a less exposed profile compared to the more congested areas around San Marco and Rialto.
This does not eliminate the issues that accompany every cultural initiative in Venezia: visitor pressure, building preservation, the risk of programming designed only for the duration of events, and the gap between temporary accessibility and genuinely continuous access. ORBITA does not present itself as an answer to these problems, nor would it make sense to attribute to it a role it does not claim. However, it can represent a useful experiment: testing how a private palazzo can welcome an audience without losing its identity and without being reduced to a mere backdrop.
What to know about the opening
The opening of Palazzo Ca’ Donà is scheduled from September 11 to October 3, 2026. The project brings together contemporary art and collectible design within the residence's spaces, with references to Lucio Fontana and Gio Ponti, marking the debut of ORBITA. The private nature of the venue makes it particularly important to verify visiting arrangements through the organization's official channels before planning access: the available information does not specify opening hours, booking requirements, or admission conditions.
This first chapter will also serve to test the viability of the format. If the platform continues to operate across residences and architectural spaces not typically open to the public, its appeal will lie as much in its selection of venues as in that of works and designers. In Venezia, meanwhile, Ca’ Donà offers for a few weeks a tangible example of light, temporary cultural reuse: not a conversion of the building, but an opening that showcases the relationship between collection, design, and domestic space.
