Made to measure

The joinery and the materials, close up: screens, cabinets, stairs and metalwork drawn by Deniz and made by hand, rather than bought.

8 · across 4 projects

The rotating installation set into the library, screen side out

Sky-Line · Via de' Bardi, Florence

The library

A bespoke library—crafted in collaboration with Borzalino—stands as an architectural focal point. Delabré bronze, warm ash wood, and veined red Lepanto marble lend timeless depth.

Delabré bronze · Ash · Rosso Lepanto marble

The full turn of the stair on the terracotta floor

Il Fienile · Sasso Marconi, Emilia-Romagna

The spiral staircase

The spiral stair stands at the centre of the house and ties its two floors together. It makes one full turn from the terracotta floor to the landing, with a glass balustrade following the curve and light running beneath the treads.

The room from the corridor, green on the right

Il Fienile · Sasso Marconi, Emilia-Romagna

The laundry

Even the laundry is drawn to measure. A tall cupboard in fluted green panelling hides the washer and dryer, stacked, with a drying rail above them; under the window, an oak counter and a fireclay sink sit on dark stone.

The table and its chairs under the vine

Villa in Chianti · Greti, Chianti

The corten table

A round table designed around a tree that was already standing there. The corten top opens out in petals, clear of the trunk on every side, and the legs gather in beneath it; the chairs and the bench came afterwards, to suit the table rather than the other way round.

Corten steel

The pivoting slatted door standing open against the patterned wall

Sky-Line · Via de' Bardi, Florence

The slatted doors

A door of vertical timber slats, pivoting on a central hinge, that closes the corridor without shutting out the light — made to measure, like everything that had to fit under this roof.

Timber slats

The mezzanine above the living room

Il Fienile · Sasso Marconi, Emilia-Romagna

The mezzanine

A deck of dark steel hung above the living room, reached by a ladder from the landing. Its floor is a perforated grid, so light falls through it to the room below; up here, under the roof beams, there is room for two chairs and a book.

Prickly pear and cacti in a long corten planter

Forte dei Marmi Residence · Forte dei Marmi, Versilia

Corten and screens

Every planter on the roof was made to measure in corten steel — circular, oval, square, long — and the screens were cut from sheet to a palm-frond pattern drawn for this project. Both came from the same hand, Massimo Cecconi’s. The steel was left to weather.

Corten steel · Laser-cut screens

Walnut slats meeting at an external corner, three rhythms side by side

Forte dei Marmi Residence · Forte dei Marmi, Versilia

Made to measure

Fluted stone, ribbed walnut, leather-lined drawers, lit niches. Almost nothing in this house arrived in a box.

Fluted stone · Ribbed walnut · Leather