A House That Doubles as a Museum: Lazzarini Pickering’s Casa Museo in Milan.

A few years ago, Carl Pickering stumbled—entirely by chance—on a piece I’d written about the furniture he and his partner Claudio Lazzarini designed for Marta Sala Éditions, and left the warmest note thanking us for it. Which makes it slightly ridiculous that it’s taken me this long to circle back to Lazzarini Pickering Architetti. Theirs is one of those quietly towering practices that lets four decades of work do the talking, while younger, more PR-fluent names dominate the feeds. I often go digging for the stories we run here—but this one landed in my inbox, and I’m very glad it did.

Casa Museo, their latest, rewards the wait. Set inside the industrial shell of a former early-20th-century silversmiths’ workshop in Milan, it’s been reworked into a hybrid residence and exhibition space for collectors Ettore Molinario and Rossella Colombari, home to a serious holding of photography, sculpture and design. The brief, in the architects’ words, was for “a single large fluid environment: domestic, exhibition-oriented and theatrical at the same time.”

Lazzarini Pickering's Furniture Collection for Marta Sala Éditions.

Several years ago, Lazzarini Pickering were approached by Milan-based Marta Sala who believes architecture is the foundation of all design, and furniture is much like a dialogue.

The whole scheme spirals out of a single circular gesture—two open circles with offset centres that set the geometry spinning into unexpected sightlines and fluid movement. Within the double-height volume, a mezzanine holds the living quarters, reached by twin staircases and a suspended gallery. Original columns and portals have been kept and recast as theatrical wings, framing domestic life across a run of rooms that dissolve into one another via concealed doors and retractable curtains.

Walls, long shelves and balustrades double as display devices for roughly 1,000 square metres of art, while a conversation pit, stairs and walkways fold together into a kind of contemporary cavea—seating for the cultural events the house is built to host. New skylights and an entirely open wall, which spills into a patio, flood the interior with Milanese light. Two secret rooms seal the deal: a vault for the archive, and a dark swimming pool.

For all the drama, the bones are steady and responsible. Working within the existing structure slashed embodied energy and waste, while a seismic upgrade, photovoltaics and advanced climate and acoustic systems were threaded in to meet current efficiency standards and, crucially, to hold the precise conditions a delicate photographic collection demands. Passive light does much of the daytime work.

“We sought a balance between openness and protection, between monumentality and intimacy,” the architects conclude—and that’s the line that lingers.

Casa Museo is unshowy, considered, and made to be lived in as much as looked at. Exactly the kind of work that doesn’t shout, which is exactly why it’s worth shouting about.

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[Images courtesy of Lazzarini Pickering. Photography by Christopher Ghioldi.]