There is an otherwordly quiet hovering over and framing the monumental complex of the Central Station in Milan, a dream-like balance that connects the details to the whole. Soft proportions and deep discipline filter through multifaceted aesthetics that come into the life, the work, and the homes of Nicola Del Verme. The aesthetics of his home in Milan – covering 160 sq.m. on the top floor of a historic building – speaks of distant origins and worlds that have been moved through, crossed, and absorbed. They hold the memories of travels and encounters, mapping pursuits and new developments. Del Verme graduated in architecture in Naples, where he was born, and came to Italian haute couture.

He has organized its spaces and its parts, intuiting movements and perspectives, gestures and rituals, and making room for variations of scale, inventions, and specific iconographic intents. The renovation project’s objective work was to enhance and recontextualize the original Art Deco elements, from stucco ceilings to 1940s parquet, which were hand-picked and repainted with natural pigments to spotlight the elegance of the period installation design. The period’s classic layout of a string of interconnected rooms was given extra depth by expanding the kitchen and removing its division from the living room.

“As the house lent itself to this interplay of spaces, I wanted to use whites and grays to highlight and accentuate what would be the home’s natural shadows,” Del Verme recounts. Gray is an invaluable ally in composing a neutral palette varied according to the furnishing, textile, and upholstered accessories, all designed by Del Verme himself. Likewise, the kitchen was designed to support a deft arrangement of its functions, made with matte gray lacquered wood and Carrara marble. But it is the owner’s love of cooking that reveals his self-evident hospitable nature: “Even after my guests have left, I like to look at the impressions they left behind on the table, on the glasses. Because they leave but I feel like the story of the evening is still going on.” The living room’s inviting atmosphere is conveyed first through its accessories and details:

a layering of his old collections – but it would be completely off-base to call these choices self-celebrating – that follow the common theme of “it fits right,” finding a way to make everything else coexist. Or maybe the other way around. As the designer says, “Instinctual choices and spaces to experience depending on my mood.” An example is the laughing Buddhas of precious Chinese ceramics, intended for the living room with knick-knacks and 1950s lamps, the collection of African art with spears and masks, Silvio Righetto’s porcelain horses, and Fornasetti’s witty design. Del Verme created all the furnishings as well as many of the paintings hanging on the walls. Exceptions are Sergio Fiorentino’s works and an enormous chandelier made by Veronica Zambelli with a drypoint technique that fits in between the two French doors above the fireplace.

Condizionante come l’umore, è l’atmosfera luminosa. Quella fedele al passare delle ore, replicabile, generata e calibrata dall’iconico campionario di oggetti illuminanti, dalla lampada Atollo nera di Vico Magistretti per Oluce, alle applique Tolomeo di Artemide, fino alla lampada Arà di Philippe Starck per Flos. E per un abitante così “sensibile alla luce” non poteva mancare la premura ‘amica’ di Hervé Van Der Straeten, che per questa casa ha disegnato due candelabri speciali, capaci, grazie alla particolare forma convessa, di “cambiare la prospettiva di tutto ciò che c’è intorno man mano che la candela si consuma”.

Volutamente piccola, per inglobare la cabina armadio, è la camera da letto. “Camera d’inverno”, come la definisce il suo proprietario, anch’essa impostata sui toni morbidi del grigio e non esente da incursioni in mondi diversi. Décor, lusso e dettaglio artigianale che ritroviamo nel trompe-l’œil alle spalle del letto disegnata da Nicola per il brand Natuzzi e nel mobile in anguilla, rivestito da sottili strisce di pelle cucite a mano, posizionato tra le due poltroncine Barcelona di Ludwig Mies Van Der Rohe per Knoll.