The house - an independent building inside a Milanese court - was an ex-body shop and was part of a broader redevelopment involving the entire court of belonging and the neighboring railing houses.

It looked like a rustic building, without fixtures and fittings, but with an explosive spatiality and the typological characteristics of its recent past perfectly preserved: the large windows, the compositional features of the façade, as well as the large exposed steel beam in the living room , everything referred to a non-residential destination, which deserved to be emphasized and used as a cardinal principle of the design process.

Faced with a space of great potential, the desire was not to exaggerate the industrial vocation of the building, with the risk of making it excessively cold and not very liveable, but of mixing the original features with more eclectic and domestic architectural and stylistic choices : from the use of modern and antique furniture, to the choice of finishes and coatings that are not too minimal, but retro, including hexagonal ceramics, the classic diamond tiles for bathroom walls and brass details in the concrete floor of the living room.

Steel, chosen for doors and windows, with a large panel design that echoes - albeit in a more contemporary key - the previous stained-glass windows used in the body shop, becomes a material and recurring theme throughout the house, from the kitchen structure to the one of the double bed, from the spiral staircase that connects the two levels of the house, up to the coverings of the thresholds to access the terrace of the upper floor. It is never a cold material, as it is always combined with wood: the light woods for all custom-made furniture and for the parquet on the upper floor, the darker ones for vintage furniture.

Material Used :

1. Jansen – Windows – Economy 50 collection

2. Mapei – Living Flooring – Ultratop collection, matt finishing

3. Quintessenza – Kitchen Flooring – Alchimia collection

3. Mapei – Bathroom Flooring (downstairs) – Ultratop collection, glossy finishing

5. Ce-si – Bathroom vertical tiles (downstairs) – Full Body collection

4. Quintessenza – Bathroom Flooring (upstairs) – Superfici collection

6. Ceramica Vogue – Bathroom vertical tiles (upstairs) – Bisello collection

7. Noesis – Flooring – Langhe collection