Located on the raised first floor of a 1930s apartment building—entirely renovated between 2016 and 2020 through a conservative restoration project, for which Icona Architetti Associati oversaw the artistic direction of the entire building—the “promenade dwelling” is a highly distinctive apartment.
Its layout runs longitudinally across the entire volume of the building, with the entrance facing the internal courtyard and the main living room overlooking the noble façade on the street front. Between these two extremes, the residence stretches and unfolds, channelled through a series of narrow passages and sharp corners, the result of layers of past fragmentations and not entirely successful subdivisions over time.
The architects were faced with a highly stimulating challenge: to leverage the constraints imposed by a very difficult layout and to use them creatively to design a home of comfortable contemporaneity. The most logical—but also least satisfying—solution would have been to place the living and social areas near the entrance. However, this would have sacrificed the room with the most scenographic view, the one overlooking the main façade. What was needed to overcome this impasse was a Copernican shift in perspective, achieved by completely reversing the spatial distribution: placing the bedrooms near the entrance and moving the living area toward the main façade. This redistribution resolved once and for all the contradiction of the living room’s optimal position, rebalancing the meaning of inhabiting the space. The living room and kitchen thus found their ideal location. What remained were other issues to decipher, some pre-existing, others generated by the new layout.
For instance, how could the very long corridor connecting the two new spatial systems be used without reducing it to a mere functional passageway? The corridor is one of the most problematic elements in contemporary refurbishments: a legacy of past distribution logics, today it is perceived more as wasted space than as a function, especially in conditions of limited space.
To rethink its meaning and logic, since it was impossible to eliminate it from the plan, an additional creative effort reimagined it as a true “linear room,” as if the four walls of a small sitting room had been unpacked and aligned along a single axis.
In this way, a genuine promenade unfolds: a sort of linear gallery where corners and functions follow one another, typically found in a standard room—a bench, a bookshelf, a wardrobe, a console with a mirror, a shelf—arranged sequentially along the path. Each of these micro-functions is identified by one of the project’s defining finishes: oak, ash-grey panels, and metal.
The promenade leads to a small study, set in a corner graced by natural light from the west, gently flooding the space throughout the day. The study itself is the result of lateral thinking, conceived in close connection with the “linear room” of the non-corridor. The decision to enclose it only partially, with an elegant glass partition, allows light to spread into the promenade spaces, which thus benefit from natural illumination otherwise unavailable.
An arch marks the end of the linear room and the entrance into a new territory: the living and dining area. To compensate for the sharpness of the plan, particularly pronounced in this area, a system of bespoke boiserie was designed, softening the perception of space by rounding the edges of the furniture. The custom kitchen is meticulously fitted, making the most of every residual interstitial space.
Even the column, a cumbersome element within the room, has been gently integrated and absorbed into the furniture system, alternating oak and grey finishes, visually blending into the composition. The living room is spacious and bright, thanks to two large French windows opening onto a small balcony. The generous ceiling height is typical of buildings of another era, emphasized by the pronounced window frames and reveals. In a design approach as conservative as possible with respect to the room’s character, the reveals were preserved, while the original window frames—by then completely deteriorated—were replaced with new ones that faithfully recreate their geometry and decorative details.
In terms of finishes, a blue-grey tone was chosen to complement the natural oak, which dominates both vertical surfaces—with articulated boiserie wrapping much of the perimeter of the home through a play of volumes—and horizontal ones, where the original Italian herringbone parquet, unfortunately beyond recovery, was replaced with new oak flooring maintaining the same pattern.
Redesigned through a project capable of imagining the unimagined, the promenade dwelling seems to have been reborn, as if, thanks to the craftsmanship of a haute couture atelier, it had finally been given the means to soften its inherent roughness, enhancing only the refinement of its elegance.
