Alinari Loft

The apartment was part of the historic Fratelli Alinari photographic studio in Florence: two international families fell in love with the lastroteca, the hall where the glass plate negatives were stored.

The original fabric was brought back to view. Stone and brick were freed of their later layers, and the vaults now span the whole apartment and set both its proportions and its rhythm. What is new reads as a lighter layer beneath them: a herringbone parquet with brass inlays, a kitchen in stainless steel, and walls in cocciopesto. Under the arch, a wall of antique mirror glass doubles the vaults and the steel of the kitchen, and turns the full height of the room into an interplay of reflections.

The furniture is a measured selection of modern and contemporary design, Italian and international. Artichoke pendant lights by Louis Poulsen hang under the vaults; green Platner armchairs by Knoll stand around the dining table; Pollock armchairs in leather and steel face the living area, beside low tables in onyx, travertine and green glass. Togo armchairs by Ligne Roset sit on the new mezzanine, up among the vaults. The lighting follows the same line: a Snoopy and a Noctambule by Flos in the living room, a Moon by Groppi above the bed. Nothing is crowded: each piece is given the distance it needs to be read.

Black is dosed, never spread. One bathroom is treated as a total black box: surfaces, basins and fittings together. Through the rest of the apartment black returns as hardware, and in a few deliberate accents: the custom bookcase in the entrance, the frame of the fluted glass door to the bedroom, the spiral stair, the steel bracing ring. It is the same restraint the studio keeps whenever it works in black.

Everything else works on a warm palette that rises through the rooms and culminates in the canvases of the owner, a painter, who made them for these walls. The room that once stored images now holds site specific paintings, and remains a container of creativity and experimentation.