In Milan’s Maggiolina district, within a linear residential building dating back to the 1960s, Studio Solum has transformed an apartment created through the subdivision of the client’s parents’ home. The project revolves around an existing feature that is as simple as it is defining: the long, linear balcony running along the entire façade of the dwelling.
This element became the starting point for the design concept, developed as a sort of interior reflection of the exterior space. While the balcony represents the apartment’s connection to the city and to nature, its geometry is reinterpreted indoors through the introduction of an inhabited structure conceived as a domestic greenhouse – a spine that organizes and distributes the various spaces.
Just 40 centimetres thick, this new volume runs through the entire apartment, separating the service areas from the living room and bedroom, which remain open, fluid and free from visual obstacles. More than a simple partition, the structure acts as an architectural device capable of bringing natural light into the innermost areas, ensuring privacy while creating new spatial relationships.
From the earliest design stages, PolyPiù polycarbonate emerged as the ideal material for shaping this contemporary interpretation of a greenhouse. The translucent surfaces clad the modular green-painted timber structure, becoming doors, partitions and passageways leading to the entrance and walk-in wardrobe, helping to define a light and permeable architectural language.
For the cladding of the structure, SmartPiù 20/75 in the Neutral Satin finish was selected. This corrugated multiwall polycarbonate sheet interacts with the modular rhythm of the timber framework and enhances its presence within the space. Cut and adapted on site to fit the supporting structure, the panels transform the fitted wall into a dynamic backdrop capable of filtering light and generating continuous effects of reflection and transparency.
The reference to the greenhouse typology is immediately recognisable, yet it is reinterpreted in a contemporary urban and domestic key. Polycarbonate does more than simply divide spaces: it creates visual depth, softens boundaries between rooms and contributes to a luminous, ever-changing atmosphere that accompanies everyday life within the apartment.
The entire project stems from the needs of the client, a gardener, and translates the relationship with nature into a series of coherent material choices. Klinker tiles, typical of post-war Milanese architecture, cover all floors, evoking the atmosphere of a winter garden; painted plywood, a concrete kitchen worktop and polycarbonate complete an essential and pragmatic language in which every element responds to specific functional requirements.
Acting simultaneously as a light filter, spatial organizer, partition and narrative device, PolyPiù polycarbonate helps transform a compact apartment into a space capable of expressing the identity of its inhabitant through a carefully balanced relationship between technology, light and nature.
For more information, visit www.polypiu.it
CREDITS
Project: House for a Gardener
Architect: Studio Solum
Location: Milan, Italy
Year: 2024
Photography: Nicolò Panzeri
