Atelierzero Transforms Milan Apartment into Urban Landscape

Atelierzero has completed a renovation of an apartment in Milan's Porta Venezia district, transforming a 1960s residential unit into a contemporary home with a guest annex. The studio's approach respects the building's history without nostalgia, using materials and colors to engage with time's layers. The clients, a couple adapting their family home, granted full design freedom. The original layout was stripped and remodeled to overcome fragmentation, creating a sequence of voids and solids, openings and vistas. The architects conceived the space as an urban landscape, referencing porticoes, passages, and piazzas. A monumental corridor-portico serves as the spine, with terracotta walls and tiled flooring evoking Carlo Scarpa. Large openings reestablish visual connection with the living area. The kitchen, a custom piece by Ebanisteria Kora, is a standalone volume positioned between the study and dining area, functioning as an island and pantry inside, a storage unit outside, and a support for a folding table. Custom furniture, including a bookshelf and en-suite bathroom cabinet, uses a composite wood recalling vintage burl. Original features like the raised sitting room, wooden window frames, and strategically repositioned lamps and furnishings were preserved, echoing 1960s-70s Italian design where materials and color shaped space. The architects aimed to evolve the existing language rather than superimpose a new one.