LUCA CIPELLETTI
Milan’s overnight transformation has been a long time coming, and architect Luca Cipelletti (the designer of Martin’s Milan showroom) knows this better than almost anyone. Cipelletti is an Italian anomaly in many ways, a born-and-bred Milanese who, instead of glorifying its few examples of Baroque or Rococo, is a devotee of the Brutalism and Modernism that once earned it the title of Italy’s ‘ugly city’. Interested in public spaces “where art and architecture are in conversation”, the architect has designed some of the more provocative and acclaimed spaces to open in the city in recent years. This includes his reimagining of the new wing of Milan’s National Museum of Science and Technology, where he converted stables into a versatile exhibition space of exposed brick flooded with panels of exterior light. For someone so adept at exhibition design, it follows that Cipelletti’s own apartment has a museum-like feel and has become something of an exhibition space itself. The building dates from the 1920s, with moulded ceilings, exquisite parquetry flooring and glass-panelled internal doors that were all preserved from the original era.