At Home with Studio Marra
The two founders of a young Milan practice on living in the apartment they designed for themselves.
Architects rarely live in their own work. Chiara and Tommaso Marra do, in a third-floor apartment near Porta Venezia that doubles as the studio's showroom, test bed and, on Fridays, its office.
The living room is the room they argue about most. Chiara wanted it emptier; Tommaso wanted somewhere to watch football. The compromise is a low media wall that hides everything when it is off, and two sofas deep enough to sleep on.
"We live in the drawings. If a detail annoys us at breakfast, it does not go in the next house."
The practice is four years old and has built eleven projects, all of them homes. They have turned down two offices and a hotel. The plan, they say, is to keep doing the thing they are good at until someone asks them to do it bigger.
Asked what they would change about the apartment, they answer at the same time. Chiara: the kitchen. Tommaso: nothing. That, they agree, is the studio.
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