It’s been a daily companion for many years, but Mr Claudio Silvestrin didn’t hesitate when Mr Giorgio Armani asked if he could borrow his watch. “It’s like he instantly fell in love with it,” the acclaimed architect says. “And I think that it told him that I too had very particular tastes.” Perhaps Armani was in thrall, as so many Italian men are, Silvestrin suggests, to “watches that are a bit show-off. Italian men tend to wear expensive watches because they can’t afford the Ferrari. So, I think it was a revelation for him.”

Indeed, Silvestrin’s watch was far from ostentatious. Sure, the Ventura Sparc, designed by Mr Hannes Wettstein, was mechanically progressive. But – and Silvestrin knows this might upset the watch buffs – it was the world’s first mechanical LCD digital. The display? Just big numbers, showing the hour and minute. That’s it.

That pared back aesthetic chimes with the design philosophy for which Silvestrin has been recognised. Warm, tactile, but also meditative and calm – undoubtedly dialled down rather than up. It’s not a mood everyone gets.

“I remember I designed this huge spa a few years ago and the people behind it said, ‘Why don’t you design the staff outfits, too?’, which I thought would be fun,” he says. “And when I presented them, they told me it was all too minimal. They weren’t sexy or glamorous enough.” Silvestrin is, inevitably, a life-long fan of the structural, reductionist, creative clothing of Mr Issey Miyake. “Dress like a monk and some people only see a monk, not simplicity.”

A purveyor of a total and singular vision, his architecture has been about pursuing what he calls its “potential to be spiritual, about the vibrations that being inside a building is supposed to give you”. Unsurprisingly, then, he’s underwhelmed by the mundane and the dehumanising nature of so much modern architecture, and the me-too tendency to want whatever they’ve seen on Instagram that drives the clients behind so much of it.

Likewise, when Silvestrin started designing furniture, it was, he says, with a view to it being a series of one-offs right for the context of the space, climate and history in which it was to stand. Much as when he designed a Mallorca villa for Mr Hans Neuendorf, he persuaded the German art dealer not to have it painted in cliched white, but made of materials that blended it into the island’s characteristic ochre earth.

“I don’t really tend to think about the design of an object as just an object,” Silvestrin says. “It’s about where that object will live, too. So, I think even a watch has to be considered in the context of the body. And then you don’t need many objects, just the right ones.” Silvestrin is not a fan of clutter, it goes without saying.

“People love having more stuff to dust,” he says. “They want to be surrounded by the chaos of things. And then go do their yoga for a hour. Sure, I like beautiful things but associate beauty with things that aren’t stressful, so that feeling is what I try to put into my work. I’m not sure there’s any great philosophy behind that. It’s just what I like. For me, it’s about finding the one good thing that does what it’s meant to do in the best and most direct way.”

Hence his long search to find the right watch – one, he says, that wasn’t about signalling status. One that wasn’t over-specced, built for a life few wearers would actually be living. Just one that did the job. “Because so many watches have too much going on in terms of their visuals and what they set out to do – all those hundreds of functions,” he says, explaining his watch choice rationality. “But what does anyone really need a watch for? To tell the time.

“For a long time, like many people, I started using my mobile phone, but then I realised that actually you still have to find your phone. It’s not as functional as simply looking at your wrist. And then, for me, a watch is not a toy, but a tool. I want that watch to tell me the time as quickly and efficiently as possible. For me, that’s a digital display. It’s more minimal, too. The idea that an analogue display goes around like the sun, or whatever, well, that’s a bit old, isn’t it?”

These days, Silvestrin looks at that wrist frequently. He is currently scuttling back and forth between Greece, Siberia and Wyoming, where he’s working on, respectively, a private home, a new airport and the grand building ambitions of Mr Kanye West. Since designing West’s Manhattan apartment, Silvestrin has become something of an architectural guru. Among his other clients have been Mr Elon Musk, Sir Anish Kapoor and, creating the signature look for his shops, one timepiece-taking Armani.

“My working day involves looking at my watch a lot,” Silvestrin laughs. That’s not just because he’s concerned about punctuality – “‘punctual like a king’, as they say in Italy. It’s because, with modern communications, life is fine if you’re just working in Europe. Then actually when it’s time to go to bed, you get to go to bed. But if you’re working in say, the US and China, then it seems like the phone never stops ringing,” he says, accepting of the fact without exactly being a fan of it.

“And, you know, working with people like Kanye. Oooph. It’s very intensive,” he says, looking to heaven. “Ideas can come quickly when you’re under that kind of pressure. And of course you have to keep your brain awake – you know when people retire and then within two or three years, their body decides it’s useless? That’s because the brain is idle. But we all need calm and space for deep thinking, too. It’s like the silence that allows you to appreciate the music when it plays.”