“Umberto’s attention was unfaltering; for him, there were no minor details,” writes Maria Bottero of the apartment where, at 93, she has lived since she was 37 years old. She’s referring to her former husband, Umberto Riva, the Italian architect and painter with a cult following, whose work softened the hard edges of brutalism with expressive angles and unexpected materials. Her Milan apartment and the building that houses it are often referred to as the first major works by the architect, who died in 2021; they show the influence of his onetime professor Carlo Scarpa, though rendered in rough-and-ready materials rather than fine marble. Riva left the concrete structure of the eighth-floor flat raw and then added geometric cutaways; angular wooden furnishings; and soft, spare colors. At roughly 1,000 square feet, it feels like a single room flowing around a series of free-floating walls. For her part, Maria has spent the last 56 years filling her home with art, books, and other trappings of her life as a designer, editor, and professor, turning Riva’s work into a space all her own.

In 2023, photographers Allegra Martin and Francesco Paleari documented her life in the apartment for a book published last year by Spazio, the first time the space has been photographed since a 1969 shoot. The result is a slender, meticulously printed volume, one that shows the inventiveness of the architecture and, more important, evokes Maria’s life there over decades.

“This house is full of reflections, and I often have to look twice to understand what’s in front of me.”
–Maria Bottero, resident

Project Credits:

Photography: Allegra Martin / @allegramartin and Francesco Paleari / @francescopaleari

—

Head back to the January/February 2025 issue homepage