PLUS ULTRA's 'Arches and Patterns,' a residential interior design project for a penthouse in Milan, is a contemporary iteration of the Mid-Century Modern style along with slight overtones of the Memphis movement for a design-loving young couple. Making this design affinity immediately apparent, for instance, is the iconic Eames chair taking centre stage in one of the living room niches. The works of both Charles and Ray Eames can be read in the sense of attempting to escape the seriousness of early 20^th century modernism, involving the exploration of newer materials and technologies, while producing designs that held the capacity to please artists, designers, and the general populace alike. Along the same lines, design Historian Pat Kirkham describes the duo’s work in her book Charles and Ray Eames - Designers of the Twentieth Century, stating how "the Eameses brought to their products a lightness of spirit," which almost veiled their commitment and dedication. Arches and Patterns displays a quintessence of a similar philosophy, with its clean lines, pastel colours, and measured idiosyncrasies.

The apartment itself overlooks a series of pitched rooftops in the historic quarters of Milan, conveniently located near the Basilica of Sant’Ambrogio. Situated on the top floor of a 1950s building, the residence is accessed through the atrium and courtyard of Casa Volonteri, a 17^th century palace with a distinctive facade. Featuring the work of Giuseppe Sommaruga, famed for his contributions to the Art Nouveau movement, the facade blends elements of his signature style with a Baroque influence. The project, in principle, emerges as an intervention that draws rather gracefully from the history of its context while also projecting a contemporary appeal in its material palette.

The apartment’s original layout lacked a clear hierarchy in its sequence, driving the need for the reorganisation of its spaces, which was the primary goal of the project. Milanese firm PLUS ULTRA's strategy was to ameliorate the apartment’s functional and spatial order by creating a cleaner layout and attempting to define a new atmosphere through a curated selection of materials and colours.

A set of dual entrances to the apartment on opposite sides in the original layout made the living room a space of transition. Here, the architects employed one of the philosophies of Luigi Caccia Dominioni—a prominent Italian architect and furniture designer—who had expressed his dislike for a direct entrance to the living area, stating that it left “no room for surprises.” PLUS ULTRA favoured maintaining only one of the entrances, further delineating a transitory entrance lobby that served as a hallway leading to the living area through two arched openings. As part of the space’s distinctive character, vertically shaded lines of the wallpaper—a modern, resolute rendition of the boiserie—engulf the space. A certain suavity in the design schematic can be found even in the smaller details, such as the Cono handle designed by Gio Ponti evoking the visages of post-war Milanese architecture. The living room is further informally demarcated into different zones for diverse activities such as dining, conversations, reading and indulging in music, keeping the spatial layouts fluid, with all the zones of activity flowing into each other.

The kitchen also becomes an integral part of the new living area, with a large custom-made painted steel window connecting the two spaces visually. It enables seamless visual transparency, with daily activities such as the preparation of meals and chance socialising unfolding with contiguity in the interface. “Fluidity is achieved through a transparent glass partition, which becomes the canvas for presenting a geometric composition of arched designs that create a subtle illusion of depth. The graphical approach establishes a dialogue with the patterns and hues of the entrance wallpaper, creating a visual harmony between architectural elements,” PLUS ULTRA commented in an official release.

The project’s conception then comes across as a synthesis between the desire to evoke history and a contemporaneous relevance guided by the choice of creating new geometries in graphic elements and modern materials. The kitchen counter and cabinets, similarly, are individually characterised by a solitary colour or pattern, enhancing their volumetric identities. The central island, a monolithic terrazzo structure, represents a direct synthesis of this palette.

The living room’s lighting design is particularly remarkable and has been inculcated in the cornices between the wall and the ceiling. The cornices accommodate indirect lighting from LED strips placed on a gypsum frame that runs along the perimeter. Alongside the Clay Table and the Eames Chair, the iconic Arco Lamp by the Castiglioni brothers illuminates and further frames the dining area. The indirect lighting in the kitchen is complemented by two pendant lamps that seem to follow the silhouette of the island and the tables. In a design scheme bursting with a plethora of patterns, materials, and colours, the near continuous references to iconic pieces of design in the apartment ends up providing a system of balances and checks, yielding a coherence in all the variety. All the wet areas of the house, for instance, feature a terrazzo motif, with different colour variations.

A hideaway door separates the living room from the private quarters of the apartment, consisting of two bedrooms, a study, two bathrooms, and a laundry area. A cosy and familiar atmosphere is envisaged for the bedroom in adopting the warm tones of the rooftops in Milan and the coloured plasterwork of the windows in the living area. The master bedroom is designed as a ‘pure’ volume characterised solely by colour, housing a canopy bed with minimal lines. The master bathroom follows the same colour palette, with the exception of a cooler tone added by the ceramic wall tiles. Matte black bathroom fixtures stand in contrast to the soft colour palette, creating a coherent composition. The second bathroom, a thematic continuation of the first, features arches as openings and stronger silhouettes in a palette of black and yellow along with grey-blue flooring tiles. Designed attuning to the flexible nature of spaces required by the needs of a growing family, the study and the smaller bedroom complement the overall aesthetic of the house.

The design of the house embodies a dual nature, becoming a flamboyant bricolage of the works of great designers, while also revealing an elusive commonality that was shared by these designers—a certain levity and joviality. Achille Castiglioni, the Italian furniture and lighting designer behind the Flos Arco lamp that adorns the dining space had once remarked how one of his secrets was to not take design too seriously. Gio Ponti, on the other hand, another stalwart whose work has been featured in the project, had similarly proclaimed how enchantment, especially in the context of the objects he created, “was as indispensable as bread” for him. While being understated and elegant, the house expresses the necessity of light-heartedness in design manifested here through the design masterpieces arrayed across the home. The apartment takes on the principles of these individual objects and exhibits them in a soft juxtaposition, combining them into a single narrative that tells a cohesive story and bolsters how the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

Project Details

Name: Arches and Patterns
Location: Milan, Italy
Architect: PLUS ULTRA
Area: 130 sq.m.
Year of completion: 2023
Project team: Alessandra Castelbarco Albani, Marco Di Nallo, Chiara Girolami, Giada Tocco
Contractor: Edildesign by Roberto Saba
Carpentry works: Falegnameria Fratelli Noli