Although the renovation project of “the secret garden” apartment — lead by Italian architect Maurizio Giovannoni — did not involve massive demolition of partitions, it completely overturned the distribution and decorative aspect of the flat located in Rome‘s Appio-Latino district.
The brief with the clients revealed a number of key points on which the project focused: the creation of a private home-office space, the possibility of giving each of the two children a personalised room, making the living area, which is now a little dark because it faces north, as open and convivial as possible, and last but not least, access from the living area to the very small terrace, which is now accessible only from the master bedroom.
While the demolition and reconstruction of the building did not pose any design difficulties in terms of distribution, since the base was already well defined and constrained by the installations and positioning of the windows, the decorative aspect required a great deal of attention, especially in the courageous decision to use colour as the leitmotif of the entire renovation.
Colour accompanies every single designed space: powder blends with oxide, red dialogues with green, blue with black.
The project does not use any schematic style, escaping the rules and playing with contrasts, mixing romantic and deco decorative elements with a more essential Nordic design. This time the focus is on emotion and scenography, as in the entrance that opens onto the “Royal” garden, the latest collection of wallpapers by the French duo Conceptuwall, a porthole as a window in the home office overlooks this secret garden, so that light can filter through and the eye can imagine. These are hints of biophilia that can also be found in some design elements such as the Vibia palm lamp.
The kitchen follows the trend of recent years, exposed but separated from the living room by glass panes. To make everything even lighter, a system of manoeuvrable walls (Anaunia) was used to eliminate the uncomfortable floor runners and visual interruptions of the glass.
The fulcrum of the living room is the balance table by Extendo, accompanied by chairs by the Danish brand HAY and lit by Zafferano be spoke’s beautiful hammered Murano glass chandeliers. The green back wall is intentionally bare to bring out the beauty of the coloured glass.
All the joinery was designed to a design with a system of wooden panelling in natural oak staves that conceal appliances, shelving and shelves.
