For Sloft+ members only
Light and color, technology and texture: here, the owners’ two sensibilities intertwine. She, Ilenia Fossati, works with cc-tapis, an Italian label that reimagines the design and manufacturing of traditional hand-knotted rugs from Nepal. He, Andrea Zorzi, works in a lamp and lighting solutions store. Their Milan apartment – where every detail is important, down to the light switches – reflects this shared love of beauty, expressed in a thousand details and curios.
Situated between the main railway station, the lively Porta Venezia district and Corso Buenos Aires – a bustling shopping street surrounded by historic buildings – the redesigned apartment has been infused with an experimental identity. In fact, this two-room space is a pied-à-terre for a family that lives mainly in Aosta, at the crossroads of France, Switzerland and Italy. As it is only used occasionally, there’s little risk of getting tired of it. The Atelierzero architecture and design studio was thus able to make bold choices for a place that had to be identifiable, colorful and meticulously detailed.
Each room is a world in itself – immersive, with its own specific atmosphere – but, at the same time, the whole is unified by a chromatic and material narrative. The warm tones of the cement tile floor imbue the entrance with a welcoming ambiance, reinterpreting Milanese tradition in a contemporary way. The kitchen, which disappears into a storage unit thanks to a system that conceals the hob, is a chromatic box. The floor is a second evocation of Milanese tradition, its flecked rubber recalling the Milan metro.
But it’s not just Ilenia’s beloved colors and textures that are on display here. Customized to suit each space or designed specifically to blend in with the living area, lighting fixtures – Andrea’s passion – are also a feature of the apartment. In Milanese studio Atelierzero’s Alessandro Triulzi, Stefano Grigoletto, Matilde Valagussa, Andrea G. Rossi and Piermattia Cribiori, the couple found a perfect harmony between aesthetics and conceptual vision: “Ilenia and Andrea trusted us completely, giving us carte blanche and making no corrections to the original project. It’s a virtually unique case, and one we’re particularly attached to.”
