This Year’s AD100 | Meet The Italian Designers

Dec

This Year’s AD100 | Meet The Italian Designers

At AD they perpetually celebrate architects and designers—they are rock stars—but they do so with particular intentionality in annual AD100 issue, which includes their much-anticipated list of the most exciting talents in the world. The outstanding projects highlighted this month have been in development for many years, and AD has frequently followed them for a long period before publication: It’s a process! The homeowners themselves, without whom these inspiring, ambitious spaces would definitely not exist, however, are the ones who possess the greatest amount of patience, faith, and vision.

Britt Moran and Emiliano Salci of Dimorestudio

Italian design history is filled with visionaries unafraid to go bigger, bolder, and more colorful than ever before—a trend continued by Milan-based duo Britt Moran and Emiliano Salci, founders of Dimorestudio. But in order to propel their own aesthetic forward, they actually looked back.

In 2015, a 1970s floral pattern printed in a textile book captivated the designers and launched their obsession with the decade, which now pervades their work, much of which comes from the fashion world; an apartment in the Palazzo Fendi, the Hermès showroom at Salone, a homewares line with Dior.

Roberto Peregalli and Laura Sartori Rimini

History returns to life in the atmospheric commissions of Studio Peregalli, the Milan architecture and interiors firm run by Laura Sartori Rimini and Roberto Peregalli, spiritual heirs to the illustrious decorator Renzo Mongiardino, their late mentor. As showcased in their transfixing books, The Invention of the Past (2011) and Grand Tour (2018), both from Rizzoli, the scholarly pair conjures a wide swath of bygone aesthetics, from Renaissance splendor to Victorian exuberance, realized by expert craftspeople using age-old techniques.

Vincenzo De Cotiis

Following in the footsteps of Italian maestros like Gio Ponti and Carlo Scarpa, the Politecnico di Milano–educated Vincenzo De Cotiis works at the nexus of architecture, interiors, and furniture design, prizing top-level craftsmanship above all else. His sculptural furnishings (sold and displayed at Carpenters Workshop Gallery) often set the tone for his interior design work, which ranges from residential projects in Ibiza, Paris, St. Moritz, and Cyprus to yachts and several retail jobs, too.

Designer Virginia Tupker in Connecticut.

One of the common threads in many of this month’s stories is a very warm relationship between customer and designer. The beautiful Malibu beach house on the cover of this issue was built by Ellen Pompeo and her frequent partner Martyn Lawrence Bullard, who counts her as one of his closest friends. “We’ve known each other for such a long time”, according to Bullard, “that we can predict what the other will appreciate before even presenting it to them”.

Pierre Yovanovitch with Nima Krings in the Paris apartment he designed for her family.

Designer Frances Merrill in Massachusetts.

About five years ago, Pamela Shamshiri met LA gallerist Shulamit Nazarian. Shamshiri and Nazarian concur that there was a “genuine bond” and that a “strong emotional connection almost instantly” occurred. Over the course of their successful partnership, the pair refurbished Nazarian’s historic A. Quincy Jones home, which is depicted on a second AD cover.

Designer Pamela Shamshiri

Theit tour ended with a stop at the remarkable home that architect Bjarke Ingels designed for a Danish businessman who wanted to live with his family and valued collection of automobiles. The task, according to Ingels, who naturally succeeded in it, “was to construct a building where the cars are part of the house, rather than just stashed away in a garage.” Regarding the client, slick sailing.