Turning the traditional into something unexpected
Roma, Italy
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2022
Turning the traditional into something unexpected: this was the compelling new challenge taken on by studio MGK Architects in the recent renovation of an apartment in one of Rome's greenest and most historic areas, the Appia Antica.
From the need to house and showcase collections of furniture and artworks came the idea of a quiet container able to hold objects that, on the contrary, have a great deal to say.
A minimalist style, yes, but with recognisable, fundamental material traits. Iron, wood, concrete and marble mix together, suggesting now a classic flavour, now a contemporary one.
The apartment unfolds around an ideal central axis, free of physical boundaries, dividing the reception spaces from the service areas. The living room, the vital hub of the project, evokes a classic taste, reinterpreting herringbone parquet and the fireplace's Rosso Levanto marble through today's eyes. Designed to host design icons, it converses, through a glazed iron partition, with the shifting, single-material kitchen, encouraging residents to meet. In an architecture of essential identity that nods to the past, a deliberately "off-key" (or blurred) note, inserted to enrich the project, lies in the recovery of antique or simply old objects (portraits, chairs, frames), thanks to the fruitful collaboration with "OH MY LAB.", which manages to give a vintage essence to details seemingly stripped of meaning by time.
Giulia Villani
PROJECT MGK ARCHITECT + CLAUDIA FAMIGLIETTI ARCHITETTO
