Gregorio Pecorelli’s Office at Gio Ponti’s Casa Sissa converts a 1934 Milanese apartment into a compact workplace through a strategy of restraint and continuity. Rather than overwriting the existing fabric, the project calibrates new insertions to Ponti and Lancia’s original spatial order and finishes, drawing on daylight, measured thresholds, and a careful restoration of material detail to align a contemporary program with an early rationalist domestic interior.
Office at Gio Ponti’s Casa Sissa Technical Information
- Original Architects: Gio Ponti + Emilio Lancia
- Renovation Architects: Gregorio Pecorelli
- Location: Milan, Italy
- Gross Area: 95 m2 | 1,023 Sq. Ft.
- Project Year: 2022
- Photographs: © Francesca Lovene
The intervention is deliberately restrained, prioritizing conservation, spatial continuity, and material precision over formal disruption.
– Gregorio Pecorelli
Working Within Ponti’s Early Milanese Language
Located within Casa Sissa, designed in 1934 by Gio Ponti with Emilio Lancia, the office engages a moment in Milanese architecture when Novecento classicism met the clarity of emerging Rationalism. Ponti’s early residential work often balanced proportion, measured ornament, and crafted interiors; this project positions itself within that lineage, treating the existing not as backdrop but as an active framework. The ambition is not contrast but alignment, allowing the new program to operate within the building’s compositional logic.
Design decisions follow a principle of legibility. Instead of pursuing a new formal vocabulary, the intervention concentrates on continuity of scale, rhythm, and material tone. Conservation becomes both tool and argument: original room proportions remain intact; existing detail is repaired rather than replaced; and new elements are introduced only where they can clarify spatial structure. The result is an interior that reads as a dialogue with Ponti’s grammar rather than a detached contemporary layer.
Spatial Sequence and Programmatic Clarity
The original apartment layout is retained and used to choreograph a clear sequence from threshold to workspace. A compact vestibule lined with dark wood paneling establishes the first compression, filtering movement and moderating the shift from circulation to interior. Restored double glass doors then release into the primary room, where daylight and depth of view become organizing agents for collective work.
The main space is configured as a shared studio around large central tables, with minimal fixed construction to keep the plan flexible and perceptually open. A smaller meeting room, oriented to the courtyard, introduces a quieter register for focused discussion, leveraging the building’s section to modulate acoustic and visual intensity. Storage and services fold into the entrance paneling and other built-ins, preserving unobstructed wall surfaces and maintaining the legibility of the original room proportions and alignments.
Material Ethos and Tactile Heritage
Material strategy is used to stitch the past and present. Custom furnishings in smoked oak combine storage and work surfaces while staying true to a palette compatible with the 1930s interior. The tone and grain of the wood echo existing joinery without mimicking it, producing a contemporaneous layer that sits quietly within the room rather than competing for attention.
A philological restoration uncovered oak parquet laid in herringbone and diamond patterns, which was repaired and refinished to reestablish the floor as a continuous datum. Original brass hardware, including handles and hinges, was retained and reintroduced to maintain tactile consistency at touchpoints. Plaster surfaces were conserved rather than skimmed, allowing minor imperfections to register the building’s age as part of the spatial reading, not as a defect to be erased.
Technical Restraint and Adaptive Reuse
Technically, the project is deliberately non-invasive. No structural elements were altered, and the load-bearing system remains legible and intact. Building services run within furniture volumes and existing cavities to avoid soffits or exposed conduits. Daylight and surface reflectance are used to support comfortable working conditions, reducing reliance on visually assertive equipment.
The approach privileges longevity through minimal demolition and the reuse of existing components, reinforcing the value of maintenance as a design act. By letting organization, material density, and controlled thresholds do most of the work, the office achieves functionality without compromising the architectural memory of Casa Sissa. The outcome argues for adaptive reuse as a precise, low-impact practice in which conservation and performance are not opposing aims but mutually reinforcing ones.
About Gregorio Pecorelli
Gregorio Pecorelli is an architect based in Milan, Italy. He founded his practice in 2022, focusing on careful, context-specific interventions that prioritize continuity, conservation, and material precision. His approach emphasizes architectural restraint and studies how contemporary programs can coexist within historically significant structures through sensitive restoration and adaptive reuse.
Credits and Additional Notes
- Client: Private
