A house born from the thirty-year bond between Ettore Molinario and Rossella Colombari: an intimate and visionary place where architecture, photography, design, and sculpture merge into a single emotional narrative.
The House-Museum of Ettore Molinario and Rossella Colombari is born from a thirty-year love story, built brick by brick, desire by desire. It is not just a home, but the concrete expression of the idea of living within one's passions. Here, intimacy becomes a project and the project becomes daily life, a shared universe that reflects their need to inhabit each other's worlds, transforming the house into an extension of their imaginations.
In this island-house, designed by LPA - Lazzarini Pickering Architetti and created from the profound transformation of a twentieth-century factory in the Isola district of Milan, a sentimental dialogue takes shape between architecture, photography, sculpture, and design. A continuous flow that reflects their personalities: Ettore, a collector of photography and Asian sculpture, and Rossella, a tireless explorer of Italian design. It is an intertwining of sensitivities that gives life to architectural projects capable of narrating emotions, stories, and creative tensions seemingly distant, but which find a new balance here.
The House-Museum becomes the fertile ground for a confrontation that has been going on forever: the collector's need to live alongside beloved objects and the gallery's impulse to change, renew, recompose. Two forces that could have clashed, but that in the daily arrangement of the house have found a surprising synthesis. The large circle that crosses and marks the environments becomes the visual metaphor of their union: a continuous movement that connects journeys, research, and visions, shared or solitary.
A museum friend described this house with a perfect image: the eye of Ettore and the eye of Rossella - Colombina - which together compose a single vision. A private, precious, and silent work, but at the same time fluid, capable of illuminating every presence that passes through it. For this reason, the House-Museum will open on special occasions, offering a visit-desire to those who will be able to grasp its essence. Because it is desire, daily and irreplaceable, that makes it alive.
The entrance from the courtyard leads into a large shed-covered space, defined by arches that evoke almost ecclesiastical atmospheres, halfway between a laboratory and a sacred place. The structural complexity led to a clear primary idea: a circular gesture, initially unique and static, then evolved into two open and translated circles, capable of generating dynamic trajectories. This geometry governs the entire project and structures a large fluid space that is at once domestic, exhibition, and theatrical. A mezzanine accommodates the functions of contemporary living, maintaining total visual continuity thanks to sliding doors and retractable curtains. Walls, walkways, balustrades, and long shelves become exhibition surfaces for over 1000 square meters dedicated to photographs, sculptures, and design, while skylights and a new patio introduce zenithal light and connections with the sky in every space.
Structural elements such as pillars and portals punctuate the space like cinematic sequences, organizing daily life into a narrative fluidity. Advanced technical interventions have consolidated, isolated, and soundproofed the entire building, ensuring comfort and optimal conditions for the preservation of the photographic collection. Two hidden places - an archive vault and a suggestive dark pool - complete the private dimension. Outside, the courtyard becomes a meeting place, defined by three large structures in perforated metal sheeting that serve as seating, planters, and contemporary Mashrabiya, creating islands of greenery and plays of light. The SPA also interacts with the outside thanks to a black bamboo screen that filters the light, transforming the windows into evening lanterns. A House Museum that blends art, architecture, and daily life in a sober and welcoming balance.
