This small apartment design in Milan covers two twin units on Via Fara, between Milano Centrale and Porta Nuova, designed by arcHITects for medium-term rentals of one to several months. arcHITects carried out a full renovation and redrew the layout of both flats from scratch, so that each one could hold a proper living room, a separate bedroom and a full bathroom. The two units share the same plan and the same palette, which made the works faster and keeps maintenance, spare parts and furnishing simple for the owner.

A kitchen wall where the door disappears

In a small living room a door can easily break the one wall that matters. Here the kitchen is a continuous composition of full-height white units, and the passage to the night zone is built into it as one more pair of doors. Closed, the door disappears and the wall reads as a single clean surface, which gives the living room its full width. Open, it leads into a light-blue corridor toward the bedroom and the bathroom.

A neutral shell, colour where it counts

Walls, cabinets and upholstery stay in light grey and white, with wood-effect porcelain floors that can take the wear of frequent changeovers. Colour is concentrated in a few places a guest remembers: the blue bedroom, the orange ceiling of the bathroom, the patterned cement-look tiles underfoot, and a wall of bright pop prints above the sofa.

Twin units, one set of decisions

Designing two identical flats at once lets every choice be tested once and repeated. Fixtures, finishes and furniture are the same in both units, so a broken chair or a cracked tile can be replaced from the same supplier in days, and both apartments keep the look they have in their listing photos. For tenants who stay for months, this also means a home that looks and works the same on the last day as on the first.

The small apartment design in Milan of the Fara units shows how arcHITects plans compact rental homes where storage, durability and character are decided together. See more of our homes in Residential, our work on rental apartment design, and the studio.

Design: HIT arcHITects – Piantini