"When I first came across La Grotta Rosa, the cave house designed by Gae Aulenti on Italy’s Amalfi Coast, I was a student at the Rhode Island School of Design. It was a simple home built into an actual cave. At the time I was interested in the idea of the grotto as an element in the Rococo imagination. Coming across this room was a revelation: It hadn’t occurred to me that there could be a modernist take on an 18th-century obsession."