Contained in the Palomba Serafini Dwelling

The place you reside is a way of thinking for architects and designers Ludovica Serafini and Roberto Palomba.

“Architects design an area, however I design the best way to expertise that area and subsequently what occurs inside the home,” Serafini says, insisting that the chair one is sitting on is a part of the state that particular person is “residing” in in that second. The Citroën C1 she arrived on this morning (a part of a particular mission with Rossana Orlandi), for instance, is one other refuge, she emphasizes, noting she designed the automotive’s elaborate bodywork tattoo motif.

Upon assembly the 2 on a wet Milan morning, all friends are provided cake, as Palomba explains he’s additionally a baker now. Because the group takes a chunk of a tea cake with orange zest, one realizes that an interview with the 2 is admittedly extra about attending to know them than attending to know issues about them.

For the better a part of 30 years, the award-winning Palomba Serafini have designed every little thing from house collections for Versace Dwelling and Fendi Casa to lighting for Foscarini and Artemide, along with envisaging the lodges, properties and even the interiors of yachts for the long run. 

The 2 admit not one house is taken into account their everlasting residence as they reside a life continuously on the go, however one in all them, a 2,260-square-foot city oasis a couple of steps away from the Centrale practice station, is maybe most indicative of their design philosophy. The sounds of honking horns and ambulances quiet as quickly as one reaches the highest flooring and enter their house by an elevator, which is their no-fuss entrance door. 

Designed for the trendy nomad, Palomba and Serafini design properties to suit the wants of the dweller, which is why their newest house was constructed from an empty open area, and the very first thing one notices is the dressing rooms on the entrance, the place, like a snake that sheds its pores and skin, one can de-robe from the air pollution from the skin and enter the house in clear garments.

“I might by no means do one other wardrobe in a bed room, ever once more, after this. The sleeping zone is the purest and most intimate a part of the home and this idea is essential to us,” Palomba declares. Each designers are barefoot as they provide a tour, with their toes experiencing the materiality of flooring they experimented with: silky, uncooked concrete with a resin impact coating.

Along with altering garments on the door, Palomba has one other rule: no eating room chairs. “I hate them! By way of (Be gone)!” he exclaims in Italian. As an alternative, a group of glass vases by Borek Sipek, together with the Florian II he designed for Driade, cowl the Enzo Mari glass “Cugino” desk like a museum exhibition.

One other hanging element is the Arrival lamp located within the entrance that the duo designed for Artemide, long-established within the essence of the succulent figs of India crops which are plentiful in Palomba’s native Sardinia. The Sardinian panorama has significantly impressed their work, particularly Palomba’s. His aunt was a ceramicist whose work echoed the bulbous artwork and artifacts that originated from the land’s Nuragic civilization courting again to 1800 BC. Serafini, who was born in Rome, is the daughter of a famend feminine architect who performed a major function within the renovation of historic palaces (courting from the years starting from the 1400s to the 1800s).

Palomba attracts the eye to the Lama chair he designed for upscale Italian furnishings maker Zanotta, a painted metal construction that extends in a seductive ergonomic form. “I designed this for Ludovica. The whole lot I design is for her… See, she will be able to learn, she will be able to have a espresso, she will be able to sit together with her legs up,” he says.

Serafini stifles fun, making an attempt to look unamused as she discusses how a photograph of them ought to be shot on the sofa. The 2 debate over whether or not or not the scratches their canine etched into the Piano Alto sofa they designed for Zanotta are seen or not, lastly shrugging their shoulders and sitting as they usually “are” — Serafini perusing her telephone and Palomba leaning towards the sofa on the ground studying a e-book. 

A darkish, romantic Caravaggio-esque scene is created behind a rounded naked wall in a kitchen they designed for Elmar lined with a darkish, metallic lacquer. Not a speck of muddle might be noticed except for a bowl of fruit illuminated by an LED gentle. 

Creating a way of area, de-cluttering and never holding on to outdated stuff is one thing Serafini is adamant about. Their solely daughter, they clarify with nice pleasure, is a particular wants educator. Ginevra, they are saying, has a unique ethos regardless of being raised by two aesthetes who create most area with important components. “My daughter and I spent the COVID[-19] lockdown in right here. And at a sure level she introduced a stitching machine house…. she was afraid I might be upset… and it shocked me, however she discovered her personal inventive consolation zone with it,” she reminisces. 

“The whole lot that’s is superfluous stays exterior… and after a whilst you understand that you simply don’t need it. And it’s as a result of we’ve an intrinsic system of values based mostly on consumerist ideologies that we’d like every little thing. In actuality, in the event you cease for a minute, you understand you respect what you really want,” she muses.

Upstairs, in an attic area, treasures abound: the “Scrittarello” desk by the late grasp architect and designer Achille Castiglioni for DePadova, a Berber carpet and their Soffio lamp for Foscarini amongst them. A terrace opens as much as reveal a row of potted lemon and fig bushes.

So the tour ends. Company go away the purity and serenity inside and face the frenetic streets with dismay, their strategy to residing endlessly modified.