Casa Rospigliosi

Casa Rospigliosi | Milan, Italy | 2022
[Studio Traccia]

A 1950s residence, surrounded by a park in San Siro district, is the context of this renovation. Located on the edge of the urban fabric of Milan, the complex reflects the urbanity of the city and the vastness of the rural spaces.

To echo the stadium and its raw tectonics, the building reveals its concrete structure on the ground floor, which is however denied inside the apartments, under layers of masonry and plaster. To make the building’s structure resurface immediately seemed like an idea capable of giving a specific identity to the space, in an intervention, where the desire was to join two separate apartments.

The large space of the living room is freed up and becomes the opportunity to reconnect the two units, keeping the sleeping area in the west side of the house basically unchanged, while concentrating the interventions in the east area.

The traces of the original structure re-emerged in the new living space, with the 3 concrete columns, revealing a brutalist urban soul. The functionalist aspect of these H-shaped pillars, originally used to host ducts, was also restored, leaving electrical and heating ducts visible. The vertical rhythm of the columns marking the space is superimposed with the horizontal one of the ceiling, which defines the kitchen area with a change of height and color.

The spatial reorganization of the entire apartment happens through the definition of a functional spine in the center of the house, in which the bathrooms, the entrance, the closet are organized. However, full height passages where sliding or pivoting doors connect or separate public and private spaces, alter the perception of this block, making it disappear.

A series of bespoke iron furniture was designed between the pillars and within the niches, to bring the brutalist identity of the house even to unexpected areas, such as the bedroom.

The new concrete floor becomes the reconnecting element throughout the entire apartment; inlays in tinted micro-cement, that draws inspiration from the Lombard tradition, but are translated in a contemporary key, emphasize specific spaces, such as the entrance and the bed area. The result is a series of original and contemporary elements, which together define a new possible way of living. Text description by the architects.