Inspired rooms

IN MILAN, AT STUDIO PEREGALLI, AMIDST VARIOUS PERIOD PIECES, A WORLD OF INFINITE OVERTONES, NARRATING A GREAT PASSION FOR HISTORY AND ART. The studio of Roberto Peregalli and Laura Sartori Rimini in Milan, near the Conservatory, reflects their personalities. A bit of Savinio, Borges and Mongiardino, the allure of an enchanted setting. This part of the city is already sheltered from the metropolitan chaos – a residential street without shops, leading to a late Renaissance church. At its halfway point stands an elegant, unusual facade. «It seems like a latter-day tribute to Coppedè. It was built in 1928, but with an absolutely non-Fascist style», says Peregalli. «Milan is famous for its hidden courtyards», Sartori Rimini adds. «Instead, this building tells its story from the outside, with big columns and a piece of the garden». On the second floor you enter the refined architectural world of Peregalli and Sartori Rimini, with a focus on haute décoration and history, reinterpreted to create a more elegant present. A theatrical setting ready to satisfy any type of aesthetic voracity, full of orientalist paintings, proudly ragged tapestries, voluptuously worn armchairs, piles of magazines, models, drawings, samples, old tiles, wallpaper remnants. And lots of books. «There are almost 10,000 volumes, on marble, ironwork, antique tiles, carpets, mosaics», Peregalli notes. Not to mention the extensive archives of the projects of the studio. At a certain point, in 1998, after the death of Renzo Mongiardino, the

mentor of the two architects, the idea arose of moving into his studio, which was up for sale. «We decided against it», says Sartori Rimini. «The weight of his presence would have been too much. Instead, we have expanded this studio with other rooms, on the ground floor of a building that faces this one. It is a space we originally used for storage, which has evolved in a very natural way». «Unlike this studio, which began as the home of my family and already had its own decorative outline, in the other spaces we have redecorated everything, creating a mental bond between the two apartments», Peregalli concludes. There too, visitors can get a sense of the same taste for beauty and memory, an intense, engaging atmosphere that makes them feel they have been thrust into another world, through a magical looking glass that leads to another dimension.