Blue Moon converts the attic of an early twentieth-century Milanese residential block into a roof-level sequence of dwellings, terraces, and shared access spaces. The intervention reworks the social and spatial logic of the casa a ballatoio through a glazed courtyard elevation, blue steel circulation infrastructure, and an inhabited roofscape shaped by the building’s irregular geometry.
Blue Moon Technical Information
- ArchitectsITCH Studio
- LocationCentral Milan, Italy
- Gross Area420 m2 | 4,521 Sq. Ft.
- Project Years2019 – 2021
- Photographs© Omar Sartor
The intervention works with the identity of the existing building rather than treating the extension as an autonomous object.
– ITCH Studio
Reading the Courtyard as Architectural Context
Blue Moon occupies the attic level of a residential building between Corso di Porta Romana and Via Orti, in an urban fabric where the courtyard remains a primary spatial and social structure. The project retains the street-facing character of the early twentieth-century building, including its measured opening rhythm, timber shutters, projecting eaves, and restrained rendered decoration. Rather than extending this language indiscriminately to the roof, the intervention preserves the distinction between the public street facade and the more collective interior court.
The Milanese casa a ballatoio is defined not only by its appearance but also by circulation. Its open galleries turn access into a visible, shared condition, making the courtyard an inhabited void rather than a residual service space. Blue Moon relocates this logic to the uppermost level, where the attic conversion becomes dependent on a new access route facing the court. The extension therefore reads less as a separate rooftop volume than as a continuation of the building’s established domestic infrastructure.
The contrast between the existing Maria Theresa yellow render and the saturated blue metalwork establishes a deliberate temporal distinction. The blue steel does not imitate the existing balcony railings or cement-rendered slabs, but its linear repetition acknowledges their serial character. Preservation here is not achieved through visual neutrality. It depends on making the new work legible while maintaining the courtyard as the medium through which old and new are read together.
Rebuilding the Ballatoio at Roof Level
The new gallery reinterprets the ballatoio as an elevated promenade connecting apartments, private terraces, and vertical circulation. It is both an access corridor and a threshold zone, broadening the conventional corridor into a space exposed to weather, changing views, and the everyday presence of neighboring dwellings. At roof level, this route also frames an expanded relation to the city, where chimney flues, pitched roofs, planted terraces, and service elements form the immediate metropolitan horizon.
A sequence of projecting blue steel portal frames gives the gallery its operative rhythm. The frames recur along the walkway, but the irregular geometry of the glazed facade prevents them from becoming a simple modular grid. Their repetition measures movement while the shifting depth of the facade creates a changing sequence of compression, projection, reflection, and view. The portals are thus less a decorative overlay than a device for giving order to an inherited plan that is not orthogonal.
At the gallery’s end, the blue stair tower makes vertical circulation conspicuous within the courtyard. Its enclosure combines solid sheet-metal panels with lower perforated surfaces, allowing the volume to shift between opacity and porosity depending on distance and light. The open stair rises beneath a curved canopy with a blue upper surface and a warmer metallic underside, directing reflected light back toward the landing. This compact assembly treats stairs, guards, canopies, and lighting as a single architectural apparatus rather than separating them into secondary technical components.
Facade Geometry, Material, and Environmental Thresholds
The courtyard facade forms a bronze-toned glazed elevation that folds and steps across the attic plan. Its faceted bays respond to the irregular perimeter inherited from the existing building, avoiding the false regularity that a conventional curtain wall might impose. Each glazed segment adjusts the relation between room, terrace, and gallery, producing oblique views across the court and allowing the roof-level addition to register as a continuous but non-uniform edge.
The gallery and terraces operate as environmental thresholds rather than merely external circulation surfaces. Floor-to-ceiling glazing opens the apartments toward daylight and the courtyard, while curtains, blinds, and changes in facade angle mediate privacy at close range. This layered condition is particularly relevant in the ballatoio type, where domestic interiors have historically faced collective movement. Transparency is therefore qualified by distance, fabric, reflection, and the occupation of the outdoor strip between dwelling and court.
Large grey-veined stone slabs give the terraces a mineral continuity with Milan’s masonry courtyard culture, while fine blue balustrades preserve visual permeability at the perimeter. Granite or gneiss paving grounds the otherwise lightweight steel-and-glass composition, and the perforated metal of the stair enclosure offers a second layer of filtering. Together, glazing, stone, curtains, rails, and perforated screens produce material depth without relying on a heavy facade. The result is an edge that modulates sun, visibility, and movement while retaining a clear visual connection to the surrounding roofscape.
Attic Interiors and the Adaptation of the Roof Structure
Inside the apartments, the roof is treated as a spatial framework rather than an inconvenience to be concealed. Raking ceilings establish differentiated room heights, while flush skylights bring daylight into the deepest portions of the attic. Retained timber structures remain visible against white plank soffits, making the existing construction legible within the renovated rooms. The low edges of the roof become suitable locations for wardrobes, desks, shelving, and other built-in elements, allowing the geometry of the attic to direct the organization of domestic space.
Color extends the external circulation language into the interiors, though it does not simply replicate the courtyard palette. Painted beams in petrol blue or terracotta mark the ceiling structure, while lightweight steel stairs use blue and red tones to connect upper and lower levels. These stairs use thin treads and closely spaced vertical rods, giving them a structural presence without visually blocking the room. Painted plinths at their base operate as benches, platforms, and transitions between spaces, converting an unavoidable level change into inhabitable furniture.
Cabinetry and fitted surfaces further articulate the compact rooms. Sage-green wardrobes, walnut work surfaces, oak shelving, and muted blue kitchen units establish distinct interior atmospheres while maintaining continuity with the colored steel and courtyard facade. The technical systems are embedded within this constrained roof-level adaptation: heat pumps, underfloor heating and cooling, air distribution, home automation, and photovoltaic panels are integrated without displacing the visible roof structure. Their coordination shows how environmental performance in an attic conversion depends on careful integration with existing geometry, limited service zones, and the roof’s architectural expression.
About ITCH Studio
ITCH Studio is an architecture practice based in Milan, Italy, and Lugano, Switzerland. Its work engages existing architectural contexts through contemporary interventions that retain and reinterpret the defining spatial, material, and social qualities of inherited buildings.
Credits and Additional Notes
- Structural engineers: Ing. Raffaele Bettoni
- Client: Mast srl
- Construction company: SAIE Spa
- Site supervision: Antonella D’Ambrosio
- RCVS: AB Project
- Acoustics: Arch. Morandi
- Photography: Omar Sartor
- Wooden model: ITCH Studio
- Project team: Giulia Castelli, Marco Corazza, Alessandro Mingolo, Daniele Torresin, Vincenzo Di Salvia, Gabriella D’Aprile
- Research references or publications: Monograph on designer Shiro Kuramata
