English Summary
Editor’s Letter
People who live in the South are lucky — they can renovate their houses all year round. In Russia everybody is renovating and redecorating mostly in the summer. That is the time when, if you open your windows after repainting your walls to get the smell of paint out, you are fairly sure you won’t freeze to death. And it is because of this redecorating fever that the main topics of our July issue are kitchens — and color. These are hard times economically, and we try to renovate our homes within budgets; we do what is really necessary and try to save as much as possible. Kitchen is a place that requires a lot of attention, we renovate it even if we don’t touch much else in the house. Our pages are full of inspiring kitchen design ideas. I would advise you, dear reader, not to save money on kitchen design — believe me, a lot of things in your house depend on a comfortable kitchen. If you want to save money, save them on walls: simply repaint them. This is the cheapest and totally foolproof way of refreshing the interior: if you don’t like the result, or if something went wrong you can always repaint the walls again. It is summer, after all — we can open our windows as wide as we want to. The smell of fresh paint would be gone soon, yet freshness and brightness of the new design would stay with you for a long time. Till your next renovation urge, that is.
Eugenia Mikulina
It Is In Your Chromosomes
Designer Stefano Guidotti lives in Como. Moving there was a natural choice for Stefano, given that he worked in Brianza where most of the “made in Italy” designs are produced. Stefano’s relationship with colour is so intense as to be almost maniacal and he reads things through their chromatic palette, connecting different spaces and colours from room to room in his beautiful home. “Every house has a soul which emerges as you work in it, and I follow my instincts leading on from a few elements”, he says. “In my house in Como I developed the entire chromatic colour palette starting from the flooring that I viewed as huge carpets, and the other colours followed on from there”. Coming into the apartment the first impression is one of warm shimmering red rising up from the polished floor and reflecting a soft glowing pink on the wall, echoed by the colours and dimensions in the artwork. There is a huge brown leather sofa that takes up almost an entire side of the room and the artwork above it. On the other side of the room — also painted blue, but in a more tenuous shade and accented by an enormous architectural cactus — is a sleek white dining table. The bedroom leads off the dining area and is painted in dramatic shades of purple accented with chrome and the silver artwork above the bed. The dramatic effect of the bedroom is enhanced by the throws and bedlinen, the linen scarf on the bed and by the tartan curtains. Stefano’s love of colour, order and water are so wonderfully and harmoniously expressed here — whether it is in the colours on the walls, the carefully chosen mix of old and new furniture and furnishings, or the constant view of the lake that accompanies every nook and cranny of his beautiful home.