Private house – Milano

residential. In one of the liveliest historical districts of Milan, near Porta Venezia, the public and the private world of an architect and designer occupy three floors of an early twentieth century Art Nouveau building. The brief was to renovate an old fabrics factory set inside a courtyard, creating a workshop and studio on two floors and the house where the owner lives with her family.The workshop-studio offered an opportunity to do some experimenting with new surfaces: resin, large scale ceramic tiles, smooth concrete and plywood panels are interspersed throughout. In the work area the different zones are divided and demarcated by the white expanded metal grids used for the balustrades and walls. This gives the whole a great lightness and an informal and somewhat unfinished look.The focal point of the work zone is a skylight which creates a patio on the patio on the first floor where the house is located: each level intermingles with the next, creating a union between the public and private sectors, as decreed by the original brief. The many bathrooms all have their own very specific personality. Simple and elegant the one with the Desk washbasin by UT Agape made in white Exmar; more complete and more functional the one combined with the Flat XL system topped with a white steel washbasin from the Vieques line, designed by Patricia Urquiola. Here the spotlight is on the Vieques bathtub with hand shower and Kaa shower head in orange rubber by Giulio Gianturco for Agape, and the Cooper system. Finally, given a more intimate tone is the bathroom finished with wooden floors and decorated dark walls with its free-standing Pear 2 sanitary ware.