Tiny Grandeur by llabb cleverly transforms a section of a historic Genoa palace into a compact apartment. Designed in 2024, the space maximizes every opportunity, featuring a double-height living area illuminated by three large windows. The design preserves the original terrazzo flooring and decorative stuccoes, blending historical elements with contemporary touches.
Genoa Apartment Combines History and Modern Design
The original hall was divided into two apartments, one of which, the subject of this intervention, covers two-thirds of the original surface. The team first demolished attic and internal partitions to create a 4.7-meter-high space altogether. This also revealed a closed-off window. Three arches now re-emerge, framing the ancient market square.
Nearly every inch serves a purpose, featuring pieces that can work in multiple ways defining the living area. All living spaces are organized through a series of custom cabinets and made-to-measure specified by llabb team. Also, each furniture piece acted as programmatic dividers, creating distinct “zones” and sections in this diaphanous volume.
Reinforcing this language of cabinet as wall is the bookshelf in the living room, which takes up an entire wall. A new poweder-coated rigid ladder allows the owners to reach items on higher shelves for both storage and usage. Across its metal uprights, this feature doubles as a ladder.
The loft, including a compact white powder structure, follows a meandering path and features a protruding curved element followed below. In the loft, this curvature lightens the structure; in the lower section, it softens the edges, creating an asymmetry on the accentuated pathway.
“We privileged a solution of continuity, keeping the ground floor open to provide a living experience in close contact with light, enhancing the historic character of the halls, kept intact even through the decoration of the original ceiling,” said the design team who also chose to retain this feature, albeit with a contemporary twist.
Preserving these delicate motifs, one of the main stuccos was missing a corner, so the architects decided to recreate it using a contemporary style. This resulted in a Lego figure – an “amusing Easter egg,” as described by the team. It became a symbol of the playful nature of both the studio and its owners.
Inside the other rooms, especially in the entry, a corridor defines a compressed zone where breathe freely again expanses deep into living area filled with rationality. The same minimal yet thoughtful floor plans and coherent circulation has been achieved here.
In the bathroom, the use of the newly added materials accentuates its enclosures. “The play of light, filtered by vertical glass with slate mullions, into the enclosed space creates an effect that makes the small dark blue tiles more vibrant.”
Tiny Grandeur exemplifies its ability to carve a residence into confined volumes and historic sites. While respecting its spatial constraints, this project provided llabb a chance to creatively approach design.
Photography by Anna Positano, Gaia Cambiaggi | Studio Campo, courtesy of llabb.
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