“When we first walked in we were a little shocked,” Andrea Giovanni Rossi said of the apartment he was hired to renovate.
The apartment, a 215 square meter rental in Milan's Porta Romana district, was “kind of a design challenge,” he said, adding: “It was kind of a sign that the market is changing and that these very tight solutions are becoming the norm.”
Faced with a tiny box, he and Matilde Valagussa, his colleague at the Milan-based architecture and design firm Atelierzero, saw only one way to satisfy basic needs. If there was to be a living area with a single armchair and a dining area for two, the “bedroom” would have to be located under the kitchen. The bed is housed in a drawer that rolls under the custom raised kitchen cabinet wall.
The apartment is on the fourth floor of a typical early 20th century Milanese building with a saffron-colored stucco facade and an interior courtyard. The single room has a panoramic window overlooking the street and the district's scenic and convenient tram.
The designers used color to humanize the antiseptic white walls and to delineate the various functions of the apartment, however pared down they were. The resin flooring is a dusty pink tone that complements the kitchen's orange veneer. (The black rubber used in the kitchen area is a nod to Milan's early subway stations.) Diagonal purple stripes add pizzazz to the ceiling. The bathroom is decorated in chartreuse and lilac tones and features a porthole window that lets in natural light from the main room. (On the other side, the round window is framed with a purple circle.)
The renovation budget, Mr. Rossi said, was 40,000 euros, or about $47,000.
Much has been written about Milan's recent transformation from a gray, grim financial center to a dynamic European center. Tax breaks intended to attract wealthy Europeans to Italy had the predictable effect of skyrocketing the value of Milan's real estate. According to online real estate portal Immobiliare, the average sales price of homes in the city's central district was $1,214 per square foot last month, a 27.9 percent increase since 2017, the year a flat tax rate was introduced for wealthy newcomers.
Also predictable was the law passed last year, which, among other things, reduced the minimum size of a residential unit for one person from 28 square meters (301 square feet) to 20 square meters (215 square feet). The Decreto Salva Casa, or Home Save Decree as the law is called, legitimized the many small studios that were cut off from larger apartments and marketed as affordable housing.
The microapartment in Porta Romana, an upscale neighborhood near the heart of Milan, costs 950 euros (about $1,117) per month. The unit's owner, Elena Butti, said it is currently rented by a 30-year-old who works in the fashion industry and travels frequently. Ms. Butti declined to provide further details out of respect for her tenant's privacy.
In many ways, Ms. Butti, who is in her 50s, is an example of lifestyle choices shaped by trauma and 21st-century preferences. In 2020, when the pandemic hit Milan, she moved to the Italian province of Piacenza with her husband, a graphic designer. After taking a leave of absence from her job as a secondary school teacher, she decided to retire and stay in the country.
The couple now lives in a farmhouse on 27 acres and is interested in farming. Two years ago, they bought the Porta Romana apartment for 210,000 euros (about $246,764 today, a sum that included Italy's high real estate transaction fees) as an investment, but decided not to list it on a short-term rental platform because of management and maintenance issues. Plus, Milan is no Florence or Rome, a place flooded with tourists constantly seeking shelter, Ms. Butti said: “The city has many options for hospitality.”
She saw better opportunities in renting to young professionals who needed to cool off in an unstable economy.
“This is kind of a platform for young people who want to prepare for a better future or find something bigger, but that can take a long time,” she said of the micro-apartment.
Ms. Butti hired Atelierzero after seeing its projects on Instagram. The company had a distinctive Milanese style that they said was impossible to describe. In her best attempt, she charted a path with color and irony – a serious attitude about not taking things too seriously, a kind of detachment that was both stylish and tongue-in-cheek.
The renovation was completed in fall 2024. Ms. Butti said she didn't want to cut corners, but wanted to design the house as if it was meant for her and her husband. That inspiration threatened to become a reality after the couple spent nearly six months searching for a tenant.
The bed under the kitchen was off-putting to some potential tenants, Ms. Butti said. Perhaps the biggest criticism, however, was that the bathroom was too small for a bidet.
“This is very important for Italians,” she said.