Designer Cristina Celestino turned an apartment in a 1970s house into a harmonious space in terracotta tones, preserving accent details in the brutalist style in the interior

The Italian town of Udine in the Friuli-Venezia Giulia region is famous not only for its Friulian cuisine, there is a lot of brutalist architecture, which invariably attracts tourists from all over Europe. This apartment is located in one of these houses — the Brutalist Residence Club, built by the architect Massimo Camillo Bodini in 1978. A multi-storey building made of glass and concrete with geometric balconies resembling Lego cubes and vertical landscaping of facades looks very relevant even in the XXI century. Inside, the apartment was in a deplorable state until the Milanese designer Cristina Celestino took over.

The apartment is located in the Italian city of Udine, located in the Friuli-Venezia Giulia region, between the Adriatic coast and the Alps

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Mattia Balsamini

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Mattia Balsamini

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Mattia Balsamini

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Mattia Balsamini

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Mattia Balsamini

“The owners — a middle—aged couple who came to Udine from the suburbs of Venice — wanted an elegant, functional space in which color and materials would be harmoniously used,” says Kristina.

As a starting point in the work on the project, the designer took the architecture of the house itself, in which the brutalist rough aesthetics is softened by the rounded shapes of the entrance group and the shell-pink plaster of the stairwells. A similar palette of warm terracotta-coral shades is also used in the design of the apartment.

The central place in the living room is reserved for a sofa in bright orange boucle upholstery.

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Mattia Balsamini

The living room and dining room are combined into a single bright and spacious space. “I decided to keep the original layout, it is very functional and modern,” says the designer. The living room is slightly recessed into the floor: you go down the stairs to it. “Because of its 40-centimeter skirting board around the perimeter, it resembles a bathtub,” laughs Kristina. Sliding curtains from floor to ceiling hide the doors to the terrace, and in addition to the multi-level floor, a partition with built-in planters separates it from the dining area.

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Mattia Balsamini

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Mattia Balsamini

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Mattia Balsamini

In addition to the multi-level floor, the space is zoned using a brick-colored partition with built-in planters.

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Mattia Balsamini

There are a lot of vintage items in the setting. These are the original interior doors with brass handles (designed by Luigi Caccia Dominioni for Azucena), and the vintage Butterfly fan lamp by Afra and Tobia Scarpa, and the Plissè ceiling lamp designed by Achille Castiglioni for Flos. Objects of Italian design from the 1970s — 1980s are side by side here with modern design objects like the Cassina Antella table or cream Frisée chairs (the work of Celestino herself for Billiani).

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Mattia Balsamini

A small kitchen is located behind a translucent partition and a door with a round porthole window. The kitchen furniture is made to order and is made in two shades (terracotta on the bottom and lighter, cream on the top), which visually facilitates the space. The countertop with an integrated sink smoothly turns into a kitchen apron, the milky beige color echoes the warm beige shade of travertine, which is laid out on the floors throughout the apartment.

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Mattia Balsamini

In the master bedroom, the wall behind the headboard is painted in the same bright orange-terracotta shade as the upholstery of the sofa in the living room. Laconine sconces in the form of black discs are the work of Cristina Celestino, and the brass bed is another design icon in this apartment, it was created by Luigi Caccia Dominioni(Luigi Caccia Dominioni) for Azucena.

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Mattia Balsamini

Arina Asmakova

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