A Milan Storage Unit Transforms Into A Meditative Home

Giovanni Muzio’s arching 1930s La Triennale di Milano, with its landmark collection of Italian design, has captured the imagination of generations of visitors. Now, it’s inspired a residence for those moving through the city, in the form of an artful 570-square-foot Milanese apartment designed by that city’s Studio Paradisiartificiali.

But as usual with the studio, all is not quite as it seems, even in the project’s origin. “During the early stages, while visiting a small design gallery, our attention was drawn to a curious wood sculpture by Alessandro Mendini,” say founders Alessandro and Lorenzo, who go by their first names. “In our imagination, the object appeared as a playful interpretation of the Triennale.” That interpretation in turn led to a consideration of the apartment’s potential as a threshold to the soul of Milan itself.

The actual space was an abandoned storage unit in a courtyard of an early 20th-Century casa di ringhiera, or multi-story apartment building, in the Navigli district. Alessandro and Lorenzo enlisted Owen Gent to create a series of psychogeographic murals on its walls: In the living area, a glistening pool beckons; nearby, a vertiginous stairway leads the way towards a new sleeping alcove tucked into a mezzanine.

More prosaically, the studio installed a ventilated crawl space and a new roof with exposed timer beams. A service core now comprises a pastel-toned kitchen and minimalist bathroom. “The finishes and furnishings merge from a challenge to gradually transform the fresco painted on the wall into a domestic landscape,” they say. The project is a flight of fancy, to be sure, but it’s anchored in the transformation of actual architecture—the way the structure’s existing twin arches echo the characteristic entrance to the Triennale, for example, and those of the maquette that started it all, given pride of place on the neighboring wall.

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