At Nicola and Roberta’s home

In a typical scenario for Milan’s metropolitan area, the 1960s apartment we look at in this article required a radical renovation to meet modern standards of functionality and satisfy the personal tastes of its new owners, a young couple named Nicola and Roberta. They enlisted the help of Nicola’s father, architect Carlo Giorcelli, to transform the poorly preserved 52-square-metre space into a comfortable, contemporary home. “They wanted a radical makeover that would maximise the open space and include a bedroom that would double up as a home office. They had specific requests for the colour scheme: simple white walls, grey floors, black and grey bathroom tiles and grey kitchen tiles. The design process followed these guidelines, focusing on simplicity and clean styling.”

The apartment was completely redesigned and reorganised, with new plasterboard partition walls, insulated external walls, triple-glazed thermal break windows and new technical installations. “The guiding philosophy of the project was extreme simplicity and linearity,” Giorcelli explained. “We chose white walls and large-format light steel grey ceramic tiles from Cerdisa’s Metal Design collection for the flooring, laid in a parallel pattern that mirrors the semicircular shape of the building’s main elevation. In the bathroom and kitchen, we used decorative tiles from the same series with a distinctive pattern that mimics steel and iron welds. The burnt orange wall in the living room and a soft sage green wall in the bedroom are the only departures from a neutral palette.”

The large-size floor tiles were chosen to align as closely as possible with the requested minimalist aesthetic. “When installed correctly by a qualified professional using the right tools, porcelain creates a uniform look for floors and walls and enhances the overall design,” notes Giorcelli, while also highlighting the material’s wear resistance and ease of maintenance. One of the clients’ main priorities was to adequately showcase their designer furniture pieces by the likes of Alvar Aalto, Le Corbusier, Franco Albini and Achille Castiglioni. By minimising the number of colours and materials throughout the apartment, they were able to emphasise the timeless design of these iconic pieces.