Artisans in Italian cities such as Florence and Palermo once lived in what was known as a Casa Bottega. On the ground floor would be a workshop devoted to the making of shoes, furniture, jewelry or other goods. Upstairs, the family would cook, sleep and live. The designers Fabiola Di Virgilio, 43, and Andrea Rosso, 47, had no intention of channeling this sort of arrangement when they started looking for a new home for themselves and their son, Rei, now four, in 2023. But when they found a 3,200-square-foot 1930s apartment in Milan’s verdant Città Studi neighborhood that was done in the Liberty style — Italy’s version of Art Nouveau — and had two discrete entrances positioned side by side, it seemed like the ideal spot for their family and the headquarters of their home goods brand, Redduo. As a bonus, the design world hangout Bar Basso was just down the street.
When the pair first met, in 2018, both were working in fashion. Rosso, the son of Renzo Rosso — the founder of Diesel and the holding group Only The Brave, which owns Marni, Margiela and Jil Sander — was the creative director of licensing at Diesel (he’s now OTB Group’s sustainability ambassador). Di Virgilio was a stylist and art director for Costume National, Armani and other brands. The two bonded over a shared aesthetic sensibility attuned to the beauty of mundane tableaus and utilitarian objects — “it could be a fishing net or a strip of construction tape,” says Rosso.
They made the leap from fashion to design during the Covid-19 lockdown, which they spent near Nove, a small city in the northeastern Veneto region that’s known for ceramics. “A friend took us around the factories and we fell in love,” says Di Virgilio. The first object Redduo offered was a ceramic burner for palo santo incense — a shallow dish propped up on three rounded legs and glazed in blush pink, forest green or tobacco brown. Brightly colored mugs and pitchers, tailored pajamas and hand-painted quilts followed, as did interiors: In 2022, the couple reimagined Miami’s Pelican Hotel, an Art Deco property that Renzo Rosso purchased in 1994, filling the rooms with bent-bamboo bed frames and midcentury Scandinavian shelves from Florida antique markets.
When it came time to design their own place, they stripped away evidence of an unfortunate previous renovation and then used the rooms as a testing ground for their varied tastes. “We love to mix styles,” says Di Virgilio, but “there are always references to Japan” — the lacquered wardrobes, for instance — “and pieces from the 1970s.”
Upon entering the apartment, visitors are greeted by a pair of goatskin-wrapped 1971 Due Più chairs by Nanda Vigo that sit on an irregular floor, in front of a mirror and a stainless steel wardrobe constructed by the Puglia-based cabinetmakers at Ebanisteria Quacquarelli. Early on, it became clear that the original yellow stone flooring would need to be ripped up to access long-buried pipes, so the couple had the broken pieces incorporated into terrazzo, which was inlaid only in the areas that required excavation. The result resembles an archipelago and stretches to the open-plan kitchen, which is appointed with both chocolate brown wood and mirrored steel cabinets, and the living and dining area, with a 1973 modular Free System sofa by the Italian architect and designer Claudio Salocchi.
On the other side of the entranceway, a long hallway leads to a series of rooms that attest to the couple’s interest in built-ins and large, dramatic blocks of a single color or material. The den has a forest green chenille sofa on a platform carpeted in the same hue to create a kind of conversation pit. Rei’s bedroom is dominated by an L-shaped wooden monolith that functions as a closet and the base for his bed. And the bathroom is wrapped in cork panels and punctuated by an original turquoise sink designed by Gio Ponti.
Then there’s a guest bedroom with an armoire set into the wall, as well as a side chair by the Japanese designer Daisuke Yamamoto made from the sort of aluminum frames used in construction. (It pairs well with industrial touches elsewhere in the apartment, such as round aluminum air-conditioning vents and hip-height metal columns for light switches similar to those found in factory control rooms.) At the very end of the hallway is the couple’s bedroom, with a bed whose linseed oil-stained birch headboard runs into a shelving unit with a cutout window facing into the dressing room. On the wall hangs a black-and-white tapestry by the Italian architect and designer Ugo La Pietra.
Ensconced in the eclectic, perpetually eye-catching space, you might miss the metal panel in the entranceway or assume it marks a fuse box or coat closet. In fact, it folds open to reveal a small galley bar with brushed metal shelving and walls upholstered in a satinlike floral fabric. The wall on the opposite end of the space can be pushed open to access the office, which trades the apartment’s largely earthy tones and natural finishes for concrete, glass and punchy cerulean accents. Here, there’s a material library of stone and fabric samples, a meeting room centered around a table that appears to be tiled (it’s actually wood) and to pull down like a Murphy bed (it’s actually fixed), a pocket-size bathroom with angled walls made from salvaged glass bricks and a separate door leading to the building’s communal stairwell.
The convenient setup allows the pair to move quickly between the spaces, but it also feeds their work, which at the moment includes designing a day spa in Milan. Not that a real break between the personal and professional isn’t possible — if you lock the metal partition connecting the realms, says Di Virgilio, the living space feels quite removed, but most of the time they leave it open.
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