The Architecture of Escape: David Caon’s Ponza Italy holiday and the art of slow travel

Planes, trains and automobiles.

Brilliant Christmas movie – equally, a trio held in affection by award-winning Australian industrial designer David Caon. OK, not so much the trains though Caon is a firm fan of both flight and four-wheels, with travel a notable thread through his career.

Airport lounges, business-class cabins and aligned accoutrement, to mention spaces designed for people in motion — Caon and his Caon Design Office have spent years shaping the in-between moments of travel.

It’s a sensibility echoed in his association with Polestar, a brand born of movement and obsessed with both design and a certain sense of stillness, the Swedish marque engineering cars for the road and to reduce noise — visual, environmental, mental.

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Travel, as Caon sees things, should restore rather than drain. Which brings him, inevitably, to holidays. Not the frantic, box-ticking kind but the rare, immersive times that recalibrate the system. Here, the 49-year-old recalls a recent Italian island escape — low-key, disconnected, days shaped by tide and shadows.

“We were in Ponza, a small island off the coast of Rome. It was my wife, Jeramie, and our friends (tailor and interior designer) Patrick and Tamsin Johnson. We arrived and rented a pink, clapped out 50-year-old Citroen Mehari and then realised there was only one road. It barely made it up the hill for aperitivo.

We stayed at Grand Hotel Santa Domitilla, which was pretty rustic, one of those hotels that could be amazing but needs some decent investment. The architecture was simple with a genuine Mediterranean island style but then layered with some unexplainable details like Buddha heads and cheap flat screen TVs. I think they also tried to use every kind of tile imaginable.

The spaces in the hotel are designed almost as if they have grown in place. There are very few straight lines and exacting details. It’s very much about texture and the handmade… It’s not especially my style but it’s so human that it instantly connects.

We also rented a zodiac and circled the island and stopped at little restaurants dotted around the coast for a plate of pasta and a glass of wine. We jumped off rocks and swam. We relied only on some limited tips from friends who had been there and on one taxi driver to know where to go. There wasn’t any kind of stress of needing to book a certain restaurant weeks in advance or visit a particular historical site.

There was one little restaurant on the coast that you could only reach by boat or swimming. It was tiny, run by a cool, laid-back, middle-aged guy. The pasta was al dente to the extreme and delicious. Olive oil on bread. Tables in the sand. Chilled pinot grigio. We don’t think it’s there anymore, sadly, but it was idyllic and so memorable. During our time, we became convinced that one particular villa on a rocky outcrop was owned by the Fendi family. The girls were determined to get a look and scaled up some terrain to see. They thought they got made and ran for it but the tide had since come in and they got stuck. I had to swim across and then swim back holding their beach bags aloft while they made their “escape”.

This holiday was very much the definition of understated luxury. The luxury was time and things done well and in the Italian way. Not too little, but not too much.

When I think back on this holiday, I’ve nothing but very fond memories. I also think the version of me there was an outcome of the place itself. And I miss both.” polestar.com/au