OVER THE PAST decade, the Italian filmmaker Luca Guadagnino, 54, has developed a vibrant, unexpected sideline: interior design. His films, including “Call Me By Your Name” (2017) and “Queer” (2024), are distinguished by their sumptuous, minutely observed scenic design, as well as by their ability to communicate visceral desire, so it would be logical to assume that his private interiors would follow those same impulses.

This is not the case, he insists. “When people compare my work as a cinema maker to my work designing interiors, that’s myopic,” Guadagnino says. “When dealing with cinema, I’m using imagery to create emotion. With interiors, I’m dealing with very real physical relationships.”

ImageIn a dining nook off the kitchen, a circa 1960 Joaquim Tenreiro Curva chair, a Jean Prouvé Guéridon table, a Michael Anastassiades wall lamp and a Studio Luca Guadagnino door made of palm wood, steel and glass.Credit...Simon WatsonImageIn the primary bedroom, a drawing by Federico Fellini and a larger artwork by Aldo Mondino, a rug designed by Studio Luca Guadagnino for Cogolin, a table lamp by Paavo Tynell from Gubi and a sconce by Ignazio Gardella.Credit...Photograph by Simon Watson. Artwork above bed: Aldo Mondino, “Turcata,” 2001 © 2025 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/SIAE, Rome

Primary among those relationships is the creative partnership with his longest-standing client, the e-commerce businessman Federico Marchetti, 56. It was Marchetti, the founder of the online fashion retailer Yoox (which later merged with Net-a-Porter), who in 2016 happened to read an interview with the director, an old friend, in which Guadagnino confessed his secret dream of being an interior designer. Marchetti offered up as a first commission the abandoned silk mill he’d recently purchased on Lake Como that he wanted transformed into a villa in which he would live with his wife, the British journalist Kerry Olsen, 49, and their daughter, Margherita, now a teenager. Since then, Studio Luca Guadagnino, the practice the director founded in 2017, has collaborated with Marchetti on a series of projects, including an overhaul of the entrepreneur’s original Milan bachelor apartment and an Art Deco-era residence for the family on Venice’s Lido. Over the years, decorating has become not merely a side hustle for Guadagnino but, like gardening, which he’s called his favorite avocation, a passion bordering on obsession. His studio now has a staff of 20.

ImageIn the dining room, a circa 1950 Paavo Tynell Snowflake chandelier hangs over an Umberto Riva table and Gio Ponti Superleggera chairs for Cassina. The custom wall tiles were a collaboration between Studio Luca Guadagnino and Nigel Peake.Credit...Simon Watson

On a mild midwinter afternoon, he was having lunch with Marchetti on one of the several densely planted terraces of the pair’s most recent creation: a 5,900-square-foot duplex penthouse atop a 10-story Daniel Libeskind residential tower in the CityLife complex that has risen in the past two decades on the site of Milan’s former fairgrounds. “Luca had, always, carte blanche, but in a collaborative way,” says Marchetti in a mild tone that a close friend once characterized as a “suede scabbard over steel.” Across the table, the director, who recently wrapped “Artificial,” loosely based on the life of the OpenAI co-founder Sam Altman, was inspecting a basket full of what looked like indistinguishable corn crackers before selecting one. The level of discernment was in character: Presented with three peas on a plate, he will have a favorite.

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