Il Fienile

Four walls and a staircase. That was all there was inside the old hay barn in the hills of Sasso Marconi: the outer walls, and a staircase at the centre waiting for a house to grow around it. Across the park stood the GuestHouse, which I would restyle along the way.

Everything else was a blank sheet, for a client with an extraordinary feeling for materials, light, art and craft, and no fixed budget. It sounds like every designer's dream, and it is. It is also the hardest brief there is: when nothing is ruled out, every choice has to earn its place.

So nothing here is generic. Most of the furniture was drawn for its room and made to measure, starting with the kitchen, in oak and dark marble. The fabrics are all different and still belong together; veneers, metals, plasters, wallpapers and marbles run into one another. Underfoot, the cotto is warm, heated from below; the great windows pour the hills inside. The care goes down to where each light switch sits and what it is made of, and to a tiny magnetic track of light above a restored vintage vanity.

Every room carries a story: an inspiration, a childhood memory, a conversation. Rebecca and I call this house our baby: I'm the mother, she's the father. A long pregnancy, a few complications, a delivery that hurt at times, and a child that looks like both of us. We made it with people who gave it the same love.