AUTO MAGIC
Interior designer Tommaso Spinzi turned to turbocharged pieces to get his Milan gallery into gear
Despite having lived in New York, Melbourne and now Milan, Tommaso Spinzi is from Lake Como, and it explains a lot. Unlike other Euro hotspots of glitz and glamour — St Moritz, Cannes, Monaco — Lake Como possesses plenty of celeb-bedazzled cars racing around cliff edges at full pelt but none of the tat. Spinzi’s new Milan studio is a “container for all my passions”, as he describes it, where fast cars meet refined interior design. The best part? It’s open to visitors.
Not just any visitors, though — experiencing the space is by appointment only. Some objects are for sale; others make up Spinzi’s own collection. His business includes interior and furniture design, and he sees himself as a “lifestyle designer” — he looks at how his clients live their lives, and then helps them create a space that reflects those lives. Collaboration is fundamental to his process, so projects often spring from the exchanges that take place here.
Situated in the Affori ward of Milan, this space is also Spinzi’s home. In this former post office, a 1983 Porsche 911 takes pride of place on the ground floor alongside a vintage 1970s dining table made from deep-green verde alpi marble. Miscellaneous seating — a wooden bench dating back to 1910, handmade in Lake Como, and Spinzi’s own custom marble Medusa stools — surround the table. Upstairs, hidden from the more public areas of the ground floor, a mezzanine level includes the bedroom.
In the apartment, Spinzi showcases a small selection of Australian designers and artists — Christopher Boots, Hava Studio, Dylan Farrell, Lost Profile Studio and Morgan Shimeld, to name a handful
— thanks to the six years he spent living in Melbourne. “Now that I’m back home, people see me as Australian,” he says.
“So I thought, ‘Why not represent a few Australian designers here?’”
One of the factors that sets Spinzi apart is how he translates his love of automotive design into the objects he then designs.
It is not the usual repurposed mechanical apparatus — piston lampshades and such. When Spinzi looks at objects, he doesn’t see a table, a vase, a car; he sees objets d’art. Their design, rather than ››
“I am inspired by beauty… To me, the furniture pieces are art pieces”
TOMMASO SPINZI
‹‹ their inherent associations, inspires his work.
It is this that makes for genderless objects such as the GDA (Gentlemen Driving Armchair), a bulbous piece upholstered in green leather based on the driving seat of a 1960s Mercedes-Benz 280 S-Class. Its tight vertical stitching screams sports car, but from the side, the voluptuous curves resemble graceful petals unfolding.
Fine art, too, peppers the apartment — pink granite sculptures by Aldo Flecchia, drawings by Alessandro Paglia and Roman busts. Their disparity means they shouldn’t work together, but Spinzi’s keen eye — bowerbird-like in its unprejudiced attraction to beautiful things — link it all seamlessly. “I am inspired by beauty, and you can find that in everything,” he says.
“To me, the furniture pieces are art pieces.”
This year, he’s channelling the Milan tradition of setting up summer quarters on nearby Lake Como by establishing a version of his studio in a Modernist house on the lake. “The Milan space is the gallery, the hub; it’s all about the design,” he says. “But the Lake Como house will showcase the lifestyle. People can have a swim in the lake, have a drink at my place and get inspired by the furniture. It’s a different pace than Milan — this is where you disconnect.” The house is now open “although not fully finished”.
For Spinzi, it’s now an opportunity to spend some time back home. “Where I grew up is a big part of who I am — the adrenaline of racing along the coast of Lake Como on a motorcycle,” he says. “I am a gentleman — but I have the soul of a boy.” VL spinzi.com