During the Italian Renaissance, architects combined the typology of the fortress, courtyard house, urban shop, and apartment building into what became the Palazzo. Wealthy families soon needed to have their own Palazzi constructed to showcase their wealth and status. Often, they required one be built in both their home city as well as in Rome–where proximity to the Vatican was increasingly vital. Roughly four hundred years later, a new generation of elite families would be clamoring to build “cottages” along the coast in Newport, RI and estates along the Gold Coast of New York to showcase their newly minted fortunes. And, a hundred years later, it would be the penthouse and beach house in the Hamptons that would be essential to show that one had arrived. 

As we move into a new era of wealth created by the digital age, is it possible to imagine the next version of the Palazzo to become the essential status symbol for the elite? While it will likely remain the case that those with extraordinary means will remain enamored with the great estates of the past–as well as updating them to contemporary life–there still will likely be some form of evolution that may sit on top of or alongside these historic places. Such an architecture would play a fundamental role in this process of adaptation. This could take the form of simple updates. It could also be something far more imaginative that reflects that complex and diverse lives of this global elite and that could go beyond the walls of the domestic to being something closer to an entirely new format of wealth. 

At the heart of this new format lies the belief that the traditional disciplinary boundaries between architecture, design, art, film, social media, fashion, business, and philanthropy should be blurred and that the format should traverse these media and be adept at bridging the digital and physical, visible and invisible. This new type of estate would be driven by physical and digital spaces that are designed to bridge the two realms. The design vocabulary of such an estate would be less focused on the traditional elements of architecture or the formats of art, and more on the elements that are capable of creating a bridge: screens, projections, custom apps, galleries, immersive experiences, custom artificial intelligence agents, data structures, and learning algorithms. These elements would not be confined to the domestic sphere, but instead would extend throughout the entire realm of existence of the client so that the estate can support everything they do and desire. It would come to include general support staff, chefs, landscapers, security teams, and tutors. It would include private schools and members clubs, private jets and yachts, and all the vacation destinations that one hopes to visit. It would also include the accountants, attorneys, business plans, storefronts, factories, offices, family offices, and investment managers that create and sustain the underlying wealth.

The relational format would be designed as a unified system rather than coming into existence through piecemeal efforts over time. It would provide far more safety and security while also reducing risk. At the same time, it would allow for stylistic cohesion and knowledge sharing across the entire network. Given the distributed nature–and the existence of the estate across a range of spaces and media–it also becomes possible to create a wide range of diversity, adaptability, and evolution over time while still always referring back to the core identity of the estate and the individual and family for whom it is created. In this sense, such a format sees the essence of this identity lying at the intersection of personal brand as a somewhat ethereal invisible concept and its manifestation via cultural production.

The format is, of course, just a framework akin to design principles. The specific manifestation would come about via a bespoke product conceived for a specific individual or family. It would be tailored to their specific history, goals, values, network of existing properties, collections, furniture, geography, and ultimate extent to which they seek privacy or publicity. The result would be a design that specifies everything and everyone that becomes part of the estate and then creates a strategy for operating and maintaining that estate over the coming years so that it never becomes a burden. Such an estate would ultimately be sited both physically across a diverse landscape and within the system of wealth that we have examined–within the tradition of the relation between wealth, power, and representation. Such a siting across and within power structures would provide for more context for cultural production than many traditional strategies of siting.

Ultimately, this format could also seek to extend the influence of this wealth in such a way that it is both preserved and grows over time. In many ways, it could define a new form of patronage. This patronage would extend from the design logic of the private sphere and offer a relational and distributed approach. This approach would be less concerned with continuing to erect traditional building on which the names of wealthy patrons can be affixed, and more with asking what it should be to begin with, how it can exist across a range of locales, how it draws on the power of the digital, and how it can truly serve a community rather than primarily maintaining a cannon or supporting individual cultural producers. This new type of philanthropic footprint would then result in a new design vocabulary. While this vocabulary could include architectural programs found in the current generation of cultural institutions–such as lobby, performance, rehearsal, gathering, cafe, restaurant, library, gallery, and educational spaces–it might also include spaces like labs, kitchens, fabrication shops, monastic spaces, spiritual spaces, and gyms among others. It would also include business plans, marketing strategies, community engagement initiatives, and investment vehicles. In the process, we might move beyond the current generation of impact investing to form something far more imaginative, sustainable, and even profitable.