Located in the Tortona district of Milan, the canal-side home of Italian architect-designer Paolo Navone is a former industrial space, curated through the lens of her highly-stimulating avant-garde work. Acquired in a state of devastation after a fire tore open the roof of the film editing studio it once housed, what Navone first intended as an office space has gradually transmuted into a permanent residence: an idiosyncratic environment bearing the imprint of her collector’s instinct and intuitive radicalism.

An original member of the Memphis anti-design movement and, before this, Studio Alchimia, Navone’s legacy informs the space created here, dismantling the restraint of Italian design by marrying archival design pieces with a vast collection of accumulated objects. Installed in a three-dimensional mosaic, collected ceramics scale walls and occupy tabletops, edge-to-edge, building new forms from traditional craft. For Salone del Mobile 2023, Navone’s career-spanning “treasure hunt” becomes a poignant statement in sustainability, in which prized objects such as these – collected and designed over her lifetime – are given away in a commentary on the material, and the environmental cost of manufacturing.

The culmination of touchpoints initiated by Navone’s global movements, and decades spent living between Europe, Asia and Africa, industrial materials collide with elements drawn from indigenous architecture and the natural environment – a continuation of the abundant garden, grown from barrels, that barriers the space from the city beyond. A home, once open to the elements, now engaging with nature through design, Navone creates a synergy between her past and present, organic and industrial forms, in a space that defies the rules of classical design for something wholly more personal. 

Can you explain what’s home, and how you define that home?

When you enter a space before the space becomes your own, you have to have a sense of good energy – a little bit like Feng shui which, in fact, is just your sensitivity to the space. If you are a crazy collector like me, you bring thousands and thousands of objects that you need – but also you don't need. I need to always have something interesting in my hand, always look at something that somehow reminds me of a certain situation or a craft technique in the world.

Tell us about how you found this house. What was it previously?

I needed to move my office from the previous location and one friend of mine who knows everything told me, I have a little building in front of the museum that probably fits your needs. The building was in very bad condition because there was a fire. In the space, there was a film editing company and, of course, a lot of plastic was everywhere. When the fire came, the plastic exploded and everything – all the roof – was burned. I saw the roof and said that it was going to be my office. There was an empty space and I started to sleep here some time. Then I started to bring pots and pans for my kitchen, then more clothes and shoes, and after one year I decided that probably I was really living here. I started to organise the space somehow, but for one year it was a kind of camping, very wild camping. I’ve been living here now for 10 years.

Are there any objects in the house you think capture who you really are?

Many items, many objects, living under the same roof – two elements living next to each other that don't belong to the same world. This is what I always do – try to make marriages which are not really typical, or classic, or expected. If I am here alone on the weekend, I enjoy my bedroom. It somehow has a lot of elements for dreaming – it is not a box with nothing, I open my eyes and see this world full of things and can start to think about the story of this other story. I can imagine 10,000 stories out of this wall.

What are your most prized possessions? Not value-wise but the things that you love?

The value of the object is an interesting subject. Every object, every element we consider has different kinds of values, there is one commercial value that can be very high and very small. Then there is one personal value, which is the value that you give to this same element when you decide that you like it, that you want this item to be part of your environment. That value can be much higher than the commercial value. All these things that I buy, I collect. Some of the things from that wall were pure garbage – commercial value, zero. The value for me of this wall is a fortune but if you break down that fortune into literal elements, probably the answer is zero.

Tell me a bit more about this wall. What does it mean, what's inside of it, and how did it come to be?

When I decided that I was living here, I decided that room was the bedroom. So I was having a room with another kind of room inside – an ugly box inside the room. When I started to collect the ceramic, I had no idea what I'm going to do with it. I found it in the garbage of different factories around Thailand. North of Thailand, Chiang Mai and many different places. I started to analyze in this garbage what was attractive to me. From the commercial point of view, the value was zero because this plate was not perfectly round – it was literally imperfect, maybe because all the glaze burned but somehow, if you analyze only that, there was an interesting aesthetic and energy in each. I have a very strong attraction to imperfection. When I opened all these boxes, I was already living here. I talked to my friend who is a sculptor in Paris and told him that I want to make a wall like a carpet with all these elements – he was very enthusiastic and we started to do it.

Can you tell me a little bit about your relationship with color?

My favourite color is blue, like all the colors which come from the water. So the sea, the blue, the lake, the rain, and all the colors that come from the sky. I am not comfortable with warm colors. You always need your environment to be fresh, cool, and with no pressure.

Could you tell me a little bit about how the garden came to be?

The garden in front of the office is very important for us because it's a barrier between the world and our space. When I came, I wanted to make a garden and the landlord told me no. So I took one of my radical decisions. I said, okay, the land is my land. I cannot dig, fine. I put all these barrels – I love barrels. Inside a barrel, quite a big quantity of soil can stay. So a friend of mine helped me to put all the plants and now we have this little protection from the world.

The word radical has always been associated with your work. Do you consider yourself a radical person?

Radical is a word that has been used a lot to talk about people who have a certain lifestyle, privilege, and then they take radical decisions that are not really typical of the old lifestyle. I don't know if it's a little bit negative, but radical is also a little bit my attitude. I like to take this position in my work, and also in my life. For me, my work is kind of a radical impulse – I make decisions very fast.

Could you tell me a bit about Memphis, about that group of designers and architects?

I was born in Torino, which is a very classic and strict, beautiful city. And I already was very curious. I found people in Austria, England and America, a lot of architects by education that were producing ideas instead of producing real buildings, or real objects. When I was travelling in Africa, my thesis landed on Alessandro Mendini’s desk. At that time, he was the editor in chief of a very famous magazine called Casa Bella. He was also very curious, and we started to write a document, all the same people. Then, after several years, Ettore Sottsass – Mendini one side, and Ettore Sottsass, more optimistic, on the other side. He built up Memphis, but the seeds were already there. So we started to build up our own story, and we are here. Alchemia before Memphis was a different output that was more full of curiosity, but less optimistic, but the point was what can we do to break the rules of the Italian design that was already "Italian design" at that time. Black leather, steel, you know, so, we introduced columns. So, we introduce color, we introduce the idea that you can be play with symmetry in another way. The skin, the outside of the furniture, of the walls, of your life, is very important.

You travel a lot, and you lived in east Africa. What do you think we need to learn in the West about how to live a good life?

I don't think it’s a matter of East or West. Travelling is one very important point in my life. But travelling is kind of for me, is a kind of attitude is not really a many kilometre you fly to Tokyo or to Sicily – it’s more how do you look at things. I can travel to the supermarket next door, or I can go to south of India – I see different things but the way I look to things is the same. I look around to stay alive – I capture million of these colors, shapes, smells, ideas, everything goes in a big basket. The analytic path is 24 hours a day.

When you look at the state of the design industry today, do you feel pride or concern?

If I look at the design today, I feel concerned, because we are in a very complicated moment of our life. Digitalization is one big question mark, what kind of impact we have in the world. I think this job has to change, is going to change.