Sky-Line

Douglas Atkin and Matthew Tudor-Jackson bought two apartments on the sixth floor of a building in Via de’ Bardi, a few metres from Ponte Vecchio, and wanted one home out of them.

for Douglas Atkin, and in loving memory of Matthew Tudor-Jackson

Joining them meant reinventing the plan from nothing: the plumbing and the electrics were taken out and redone, and the internal structure with them. It was heavy restructuring before it was ever an interiors project.

The two plans became one long room along the window wall, so that the Uffizi, the Arno, Palazzo Vecchio and the Duomo are all visible from a single table.

A backlit onyx counter stands where the two flats met and does the work a wall would have done. Service rooms are held at the back, and the corridor is closed by a pivoting door of timber slats rather than a solid one — division without losing the light.

The second piece doing a wall’s work is the library: bronze, ash and Rosso Lepanto, standing free between the hall and the living room, open on both sides so the light and the view carry straight through it.