A casa di Nicola Santini
Today, we tell you the birth of a new project, with the form of a column in which artists, architects, influencers, designers, collectors and family friends illustrate the link they have built over time with their home.
We will see design houses, but also simple houses, tastefully decorated with love and extremely personal style. Unique bonds that are created between people and the place where you decide to build your own life.
The first guest of our column, a friend, and design lover, enough to conduct a themed broadcast, is Nicola Santini.
Journalist, writer and television author, after studying communication in the United States he specialized in international etiquette of which he is considered the highest expert in Italy.
He lives between Milan, where we met him, Trieste and Camaiore, and in every house the precise and studied division of spaces cannot be missing. "I have always been in favor of divided spaces. I like open space only in photography and in others’ homes. [... ] I love privacy even when I’m alone in the house, so wide to the walls!"
Another essential thing for Nicola are the works of art, which in our tour in his house he proudly shows us. Positioned all with a rigorous logic, they represent a journey through emotions and memories. Special and sometimes unique pieces, found in markets or made to measure. Each piece tells a story, which is then that of Nicola.
You enter a long corridor, strongly wanted and designed as a place of introduction, to immerse yourself in two side walls full of paintings, photos and anecdotes, transformed furniture, handmade lamps and family portraits.
Here and there our furnishing accessories peep out, mixing perfectly to the environment of a house that is a succession of stories: a carnation by Renato Guttuso recalling the memory of the socialist father who metaphorically protects the house.
Here and there our furnishing accessories peep out, mixing perfectly to the environment of a house that is a succession of stories: a carnation by Renato Guttuso recalling the memory of the socialist father who metaphorically protects the house.
The design concept is that of a comfortable and equipped suite, where to stay during the moments of passage in Milan, but that reflects the style and taste of Nicola. He tells us about the various artists who are in the corners of the house, the family pieces collected in the under roof and the harmonious balance of the materials that make up the rooms: marble, iron, wood... everything takes shape with the character of Nicola, also made of contrasts that are perfectly mixed.
An example is the kitchen, dark and basic, but accompanied by our light marble that illuminates the environment, along with the gilded backsplash, two revisited lamps and two large windows.
Each complement has life in the moment when Nicola feels more his, and then take another form at a friend’s house, sold or put on standby in its storage.
Very few plants, blame Nicola’s black thumb!
But everywhere we follow his two chihuahuas, Ettore and Svevo, faithful friends who also become characters of paintings, along with the spatial concept of waiting expressed in the Fontana in the room: "I have a bad relationship with the waiting concept because my patience rate is definitely not that of the Dalai Lama, so I appreciate to find it in the bedroom and I wake up in the morning telling myself to be patient, like a mantra".
But everywhere we follow his two chihuahuas, Ettore and Svevo, faithful friends who also become characters of paintings, along with the spatial concept of waiting expressed in the Fontana in the room: "I have a bad relationship with the waiting concept because my patience rate is definitely not that of the Dalai Lama, so I appreciate to find it in the bedroom and I wake up in the morning telling myself to be patient, like a mantra".