What does ‘home’ mean to you?

Home is the place that mirrors my idea of domestic beauty. I try to surround myself with things that I find beautiful and lovely. I especially recognise my idea of home as anywhere you can breath a good energy and a sense of warm feeling. This domestic atmosphere is created by a very subtle equilibrium between shapes, colour, voids, stories carried on by objects of different eras.

Do you have any advice for any aspiring designers?

I would just tell anybody to look for a personal path, in order to find a unique way to express themselves. In the design field, it is very important to develop a personal language, also when you receive very specific commissions by different clients.

What do you see a the main challenges when designing a home for a client?

Somebody said that an architect is a kind of psychologist for the client, and I find this statement absolutely true when you have to design a personal house. Home is both a representative place and the space of inner solitude. Trying to develop a project that maintains the equilibrium between my own domestic idea and the inner landscape of the owners is something really challenging.

Where do you stand on decorative design? Does decoration have a place within modern architecture?

I see decoration as something basilar for a good design project, and not as a useless mannerism. Every architect has tried to experiment with materials, colours, details, even the ones more radical in refusing the decoration and embracing a more “pure” design. I think Adolf Loos or Le Corbusier.

How important is colour to you?

Colour is an essential part of any design project, from objects to interiors. It can radically change the sense of a project, because every colour has a specific meaning and it carries on with it centuries of art and experiments.

What has been your favourite project so far?

I had the chance to develop for Fendi an idea I started to think about sometime ago. I refer to the coffee table designed for Design Miami, a piece of jewellery carried on in the furniture scale.

Period home or new build?

I choose a period home. I love period details that are difficult to find in new buildings.Window frames, colourful floors, door handles. I think they are kind of an obsession, a little luxury for my eyes and hands.

What inspires you?

I like to walk around the city where I live, Milan. I often come back to visit some places I especially love. Villa Necchi by Piero Portaluppi, for example, is a place full of inspirations. I also love to discover Milanese Entrance Hallways – they are places of pure projectual quality. They match private and public areas and usually show unexpected materials mix and unique decorative and architechtural solutions.

What’s next for you?

…stay tuned…x

We certainly will, Cristina xx