Casa BLTB: Playful Milan Apartment
Casa BLTB crowns the top floor of a 1960s residential block in Milan, Italy, reimagined by Studio ApiuM as a vibrant apartment for contemporary city life. Two sweeping partitions shape a generous living area and conceal service rooms, while color, texture, and custom furniture draw the eye back toward the panoramic balcony that wraps the building. Each room carries a distinct mood yet speaks fluently to the apartment’s playful new rhythm.
Light spills across the upper-floor apartment and slides along a curved golden wall before catching on blue velvet cushions and framed drawings. Outside, a continuous balcony tracks the perimeter, setting the everyday routines of the home against an open view of Milan.
This is an apartment renovation in a 1960s Milanese building, redesigned by Studio ApiuM for new owners who wanted a generous living area and more efficient service rooms. The project orients daily life toward the city panorama and treats color, texture, and furniture as active tools to organize circulation. Interior character grows from these moves, with each room tuned to a slightly different register while remaining part of one continuous story.
Curved Walls Glow
From the entrance, two curving partitions steer movement toward the main room, turning what was once a conventional corridor into a broad, unfolding sequence. Their gentle arc hides service areas and the routes to kitchen and bedrooms, so storage and doors fall into the background while the living area opens up. Both walls are wrapped in golden wallpaper that catches daylight and soft artificial light, adding warmth to the pale resin cement floor underneath. Those glowing planes give the apartment a clear center of gravity and quietly reference the plastic geometries of its 1960s shell.
Living Room Color
In the main room, a deep blue modular sofa with pink cushions anchors everyday life, turned toward the windows and the line of the city beyond. Nearby, a dining table in dark wood gathers a mix of mid-century style chairs beneath a radial chandelier whose black and brass arms echo the era of the building. Walls stay mostly light, with a grid of framed drawings lending rhythm without cluttering the volume. The resin cement flooring runs continuously through the living and dining areas, giving this social zone a calm base against which bolder colors can sit comfortably.
Pocket Studio Niche
One concave side of the curved wall carves out a compact studio that opens directly to the living room yet keeps a distinct tone. Here, surfaces shift to a rich ocher hue that wraps floor, walls, and ceiling, so the desk, shelving, and objects read as part of a single warm envelope. A green velvet armchair and small tables create a reading corner near the window, softened by plants and a pendant light that drops from the ceiling plane. This small room demonstrates how color and built-in furniture work together to give even a tight footprint clear purpose.
Kitchen, Bedrooms, Baths
The kitchen follows the building’s angles with pale upper cabinets and muted blue lower units, finished with white counters and a slim linear light above. Open shelving at the end of a tall unit tucks cookbooks and objects into the corner, maintaining the clean surfaces while still bringing daily life into view. In the bedrooms, resin cement gives way to wood flooring, adding tactile warmth underfoot and a quieter tone for rest. Large-scale wall graphics and wallpaper bring color back in, from soft blue geometries behind the bed to full-height patterns in the main bathroom, where a timber vanity, double basins, and a playful ceiling light with colored spheres complete the composition.
Back in the living area, the eye still catches on the golden curves that hold circulation, service rooms, and the tiny studio inside their sweep. Daylight moves along those surfaces during the day, then cedes to the chandeliers and lamps that spark at night. The apartment stays open to the skyline, with its palette and furnishings tuned to the easy, upbeat rhythm of everyday life above Milan.
Photography by Max Pescio
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