Design report
Italian superbrand Gallotti&Radice has furnished an apartment in Milan – longtime fan Pip Rich calls in
Gallotti&Radice has always painted a picture of exactly the life I want to live. The Italian furniture and lifestyle brand’s designs are elegant, refined, smart… yet help to create spaces that are somehow sociable, informal, relaxed. There’s an ambient alchemy in the rounded edges of the Cloud Infinity sofa, the curves of the Sophie armchair, the bouncing bubble-like balls of the Bolle lights, all of which we’ve featured many times across the pages of Livingetc. ‘A home is not really a home if it is not a comfortable place that welcomes us every day,’ says Silvia Gallotti, designer and owner of the brand, neatly encapsulating the ethos as editor that I try to bring to every issue.
This is also the perfect way to describe Casa Mia a Milano, the early 20th-century apartment Gallotti&Radice has taken over in Milan, filling it with products. Having enlisted the help of interior designers – and longtime collaborators – Dainelli Studio in the renovation, the apartment is small but perfectly formed: one bedroom, one dining room, one living room of dreams. The palette is neutral with metallic gleams; the shapes are inviting; and it makes you feel like you’re living the best, most elegant version of your life – but also like you want to take your shoes off, grab a large glass of wine and relax. Which is exactly what I did when I went there for dinner, as happily full of lasagne as the space was of interiors inspiration.
The aesthetic Gallotti&Radice is known for and has brought to the design fore is a key mood in current decor. Many of the designers who inspire me most – Bryan O’Sullivan, Brigette Romanek, Olga Ashby – all use these shapes, textures and furniture placements to build rooms that influence how most of us want to decorate. Gallotti&Radice is your best starting point, an effortless aesthetic that, as Casa Mia a Milano shows, is able to make a relatively small space feel full of personality without being cluttered. The trick is in the mix of designs on the floor and
