Appartamento San Sebastiano: Wunderkammer-Inspired Milanese Apartment
Appartamento San Sebastiano reimagines a late-19th-century apartment in Milan, Italy, through the lens of Deamicisarchitetti. The studio reshapes the corner residence into a fluid, Wunderkammer-inspired interior where vintage pieces, art, and custom elements converse across time. Rooms slip into one another along a circular route, while materials from Carrara marble to steel and wood ground the evolving collection of objects in a quietly theatrical domestic setting.
About Appartamento San Sebastiano
Light filters across preserved wall decorations and original flooring, catching on marble, steel, and glass before dissolving into deeper corners of the apartment. Each room holds its own rhythm, yet the eye keeps moving, drawn from one quietly staged scene to the next.
This is an apartment, but it behaves like a lived-in cabinet of curiosities. In Milan, Deamicisarchitetti reworks a late-19th-century corner residence as a continuous interior where art, vintage objects, and custom furnishings share equal weight with structure and circulation. The project treats every surface and piece of furniture as part of a larger composition, turning everyday routines into encounters with texture, light, and memory.
Tracing A Circular Route
The traditional sequence of closed rooms gives way to a fluid layout organized along a gentle circular path. One area yields to the next without hard thresholds, trading hierarchy for a looser, more adaptable order. Strategic slits, cuts, and internal openings increase visual permeability, stretching sightlines so that a person at rest still reads the depth of the apartment. Movement becomes informal, and daily life folds into a quiet promenade of views, surfaces, and objects.
Conversation Area As Hinge
At the heart of this loop, the conversation area acts as a hinge that gathers different rooms around it. Here Deamicisarchitetti installs a custom structure that merges sofa, bookcase, and ramp into a single sculptural element. Its inclined plane carries an inlay derived from the star motif of the original cement tiles, tying present interventions to the building’s first finishes. The piece supports sitting, reading, and informal connection, encouraging a more horizontal, intimate relationship among those who share the apartment.
Kitchen As Tripartite Stage
The kitchen revisits the tripartition of 1930s domestic workrooms, translating operational, convivial, and storage zones into three distinct elements. A central steel island with brass accents handles preparation while marking the room’s core, its cool sheen set against warmer materials around it. Along one flank, a glass-and-wood cabinet recalls the open pantry, giving food and objects a visible, almost archival presence. A compact wood and marble technical block gathers the more intensive functions, while the octagonal range hood becomes a luminous sculpture that anchors and illuminates the entire room.
Marble Rituals In The Baths
Carrara marble threads through the bathrooms, where ritual meets precise geometry. In the guest bathroom, a marble washbasin shaped like a holy-water font sets a quiet, contemplative tone, and a painting replaces the expected mirror to create a moment of suspended reflection. The master bathroom turns to a large window and a restrained use of Carrara, chosen directly in the quarry, extending across washbasin, floor, shower enclosure, and furnishings. Custom basin, shower, and flooring follow the alignments of the architectural envelope, so stone and room read as a single measured volume.
Objects, Art, And Time
Throughout the apartment, preserved wall decorations and remnants of the original flooring keep the memory of the building in clear view. Against this historical layer, vintage objects and artworks—many sourced from Spazio RT—introduce another register of time. A large sculpture of Saint Sebastian occupies a niche formed with a dedicated template and formwork, while a carved wooden angel rests on a console and a portrait of Lucrezia Romana looks over the bedroom. The growing art collection, from contemporary photography to works by Old Masters, turns walls into a changing cabinet, so everyday routes repeatedly cross paths with images and artifacts.
Toward evening, the interplay between artificial light, polished marble, and aging plaster grows more pronounced. The apartment stays domestic yet quietly theatrical, an interior where daily routines pass through a layered Wunderkammer of matter, history, and light.
Photography by Alberto Strada
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