Sometimes it takes an outsider’s perspective to capture the essence of a place.  Casa Talia in the UNESCO-listed town of Modica is the work pair of architects from Milan (no points for guessing) who now call Sicily home.

I showed this post to an Italian friend of mine who didn’t share my enthusiasm at all, calling the mix of styles ‘unharmonious’ no less. But rather than challenge him,  I went with the idea for a bit and realised that our perceptions weren’t that far apart after all.  It’s the tension between antique and shiny new in Casa Talia that fascinates me most.  For me, it’s precisely this deliberate disharmony, the fearless bumping together of new ideas with the old, that makes Italian interior design so attractive.

I tried to console my friend by telling him that this modern ‘intervention’ on the host structure wouldn’t be forever, that the building was tough enough to take it, that some time in the future there would be another pair of designers with a totally new way of adapting old to new.  I don’t know if my words did any good but as I said them I realised that somehow the idea of the transient nature of what we do as interior designers especially was a consolation for me as well.  It also made me want to be braver and design more in the moment.  Timelessness is a myth after all.

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