Paolo Castellarin is an interior decorator. 
Born in Pordenone in 1984, he lives and works between Milan, Paris, Venice, and Val Tidone. 

All his projects are animated by a tasty vitality, a passion for décor that escapes any dictate, trends in living, quiet bourgeois choices, or ostentatiously intellectual ones.

His expressive vitality is fantasy; and as we know, fantasy is the enemy of boredom.

As the grandson and great-grandson of mosaicists, he grew up in an environment of creativity and industriousness.
But not only that: the karstic land of Friuli unites him with one of the most important intellectuals of the Italian and European twentieth century, Pier Paolo Pasolini.
His great-grandmother was the sister of PPP's mother, the beloved Susanna Colussi.
PPP and Paolo's grandmother, direct cousins, grew up together, in simplicity and decorum.

Paolo's career, with these premises, is to be observed as an independent, unconventional path.
Like the style of his projects. His expressive vitality is fantasy; and as we know, fantasy is the enemy of boredom.
In light of this story, it will not be surprising to discover Castellarin's path, who, before and during the beginning of his interior design career, worked as an oral surgeon in Milan hospitals.
A professional choice made out of passion, never out of duty.
A profession that Paolo loved very much and still considers fundamental for his human evolution.

But there's more.
There's an elementary school boy from Pordenone, with glasses and blonde hair, who - like in a fairy tale - falls in love head over heels.
Not with a puppy or a rare toy.
But with the houses of relatives, colleagues, or family friends, every time he has the chance to visit them.
Objects, sofas, mirrors, pendant lamps.
These are his lightning strikes.
Paolo falls in love and becomes curious, and he notes in his child's mind all those design details that captivate his imagination.
Lights are his favorites: he loves them so much that as a teenager, he starts his own small private collection.
Instead of accumulating Lego or Playmobil, Paolo starts collecting a small Flos, an Artemide, a Stilnovo...

Curiosity turns into passion, and Paolo often asks his parents to go back and play in those houses: not to be with his little friends, but to see again certain pieces of design.
Many of which, over the years, have become "his".
As soon as he could, he bought them, and they are still part of the furnishings of his homes, like the Saarinen table and the Breuer chairs, his very first adult purchases.

The career of a surgeon for Castellarin means putting himself at the service of others.
But being an interior decorator is, in a way, also "working for others," and he is very good at it.
Paolo realizes that the houses he has furnished - from his first minimalist and well-educated Milanese home to those inhabited with his husband Didier, glossy, bold, and incredibly free from a creative point of view - are important starting points for his private and professional dimension.

They are houses that, initially quietly, and then increasingly - thanks to the covers of important magazines and volumes of interior & décor - lead Paolo to receive requests from private clients: what was just a passion has become a new profession.
Step by step, after 18 years of hospital career, Paolo understands that the time has come to listen to his first love.
He enrolls at the Polytechnic University of Milan and obtains a master's degree in Industrial Design.
Here is the result.

TEXT BY: BENEDETTA ROSSI ALBINI