散步公寓丨意大利米兰丨Icona Architetti Associati

Promenade Apartment, a 1930s residence in Milan designed by Icona Architetti Associati, features a subtle yet distinct arrangement of living spaces. Completed in 2021, the refurbished home is organised into two ecosystems: one for private functions and another for socialising. The two zones are connected by a central corridor that swings subtly between sombre and warm tones.

Milanese Promenade

For the project, finished in 2021, the studio developed a strategy “influenced by outsidethe-box thinking” for dealing with the challenges posed by the long, narrow layout. One end of the Milan home features the entrance hall with an attached mudroom. The other end includes the living area with a dual zone for cooking, dining and socializing.

Beyond the apartment’s two main zones, Icona Architetti Associati transformed the middle spaces into supporting elements such as a narrow office, additional storage space, a laundry room, a bathroom and a powder room. An additional interesting section is the central hallway which forms what the team called the house’s “linear room” — the promenade.

As described in the project text, the corridor space is lined with shelves and cabinets that form “micro-zones” consisting of, “a bench, a bookshelf, a wardrobe, a console table with a mirror and a shelf follow each other along the way”. The promenade leads up to the home office, which is naturally bright, compact and features an old-school work desk.

Narrow But Cozy Spaces

Toward the top of the hallway, the promenade ends at a transverse door-less arched opening, which transitions into the dining space. The kitchen is then tucked away into the right side of the room, beside the windows. In the centre of the open-plan space, a wooden dining table with light blue chairs can be found. The wooden material also provides a soft transition to the living space.

For the salvaged space on the other side of the room, caulked wooden panels fill in to accommodate the building’s original column. Across the column is a long cushioned window seating opposite a TV storage unit. Meanwhile, the understated home’s “careful selection of colors and materials” sees the living space washed with a light grey coating, while the “environment is matched with vintage-style furniture pieces”.

Noble Yet Intimate Home Design

According to Icona Architetti Associati, larch wood is the other main component of the apartment’s “coherent and persistent” colour and material palette. Derived from the entrance section, the almost Japanese-like narrow strip subtly follows to the other end of the space before framing the entire perimeter of the living space.

Other parts of the house feature the glossy wooden colour here and there, adding warmth and almost a tint of red to the otherwise calm and evenly distributed walls coloured with a “shades of grey”, the team said.

A gentle study of materials and colours making a shift from choices like knotty wood to deep blue or purple help animate the varying spaces within the linear shaped form.

The compact but highly functional and linear apartment design expressively relieves the pre-existing “grainy” feature, while offering an alternative atmosphere in sharp contrast to the urban Milan setting.