programme: plans, renovation management and interiors of a flat in the historical city centre.

client: Private commission

team: sophia los

collaborators: michela gugole, lisa modenini, cristiana rossetti, donato de pizziol

city: verona, Italy

status: completed, 2009

Renovation of a flat situated on the top floor of an historical building. The revision of internal partitions aimed at making the best possible use of the available surface area. The dry wooden walls work as containers in most cases, thus creating a coherent and fluid space. In the hall, an enclosed balcony extends the exceedingly small kitchen area. For this intervention, we selected biocompatible materials and technologies: walls and fitted wardrobes made of white-washed tulipwood panels and oak wood darkened with water-based stains, dark oak floors, colour wash paint, acoustic insulation in kenaf, combining panels of different densities, and teak panelling for the master bathroom. We installed radiant ceiling heating and cooling in the sleeping area and underfloor heating and cooling in the living area to protect the plasterwork ceiling.

Originally designed for a young couple with a small child, the flat has hosted the man’s father since 2015, as his son moved to a bigger house. For this project, the plasterwork on the ceiling was carefully restored by Andrea Ciresola.

photos: alberto sinigaglia

programme: plans, construction management of the interiors and balcony.

client: private commission

team: sophia los

Collaborators: renza mara calabrese (balcony), luca fadini (landscaping), laboratorio morseletto 

city/area: sommacampagna, Italy

status: completed, 2009

Renovation of a top floor flat of an historical building.

The container wall in the living room, the shaping of natural light (through the creation of two niches), and the sleeping area chromatic schemes are the main project themes. 

aggiungi da articolo viliana

The works finished in 2009 with the completion of the balcony. On the other side of the wall, we could glimpse a beautiful park. This fact inspired the whole project: a little balcony with a panoramic view, adding the exterior to renovation work I had undertaken in a small Veronese flat. The sight was remarkable, but peeking the park on the other side of the wall proved irresistible. So, I imagined steps that turn into countertop and sink, recalling the stairs full of vases of ancient “borghi” (medieval hamlets) and completing the balcony space with one single functional and playful element. For the relaxing area, surrounded by plants selected among the ancient species in the nearby countryside, I designed a folding sofa-bed, where one can sunbathe as on a boat.

programme: plans, renovation management and studio interiors.

client: private commission

team: sophia los

collaborators: marta stocco, renza mara calabrese (wardrobe)

city/area: padua, Italy

status: completed, 2014

Renovation and interior design for a Chartered Accountants Firm in Padua. The interiors featured a big central area immersed in the dark, despite facing south and north. We decided to make the shadows work for us by laying a system of paths connecting the private offices and the conference rooms, creating a contrast between the sombre passageways and the much brighter offices. Taking our cue from the shot fabrics seen in Tiepolo’s frescos in The Chinese Room of The Foresteria of Villa Valmarana ai Nani, we chose two colours, two complementary shades: a blue-grey and a brick-red shade. We applied them to the walls, floors and ceilings to create the perception of a shot effect, of dynamic and relaxing tones.We entrusted the reception area to the art of Federica Agnoletto – Freak of Nature, offering a cheerful welcome to the clients, often coming to the accounting firm burdened by all their financial worries. The wardrobe is a Renza Mara Calabrese design. We gave particular importance to natural and artificial light in the office. We added large planters along the window walls, where we placed plants among some NASA deemed most effective in absorbing polluting agents.

photos: alberto sinigaglia

Giandomenico Tiepolo, The Chinese Room, The Foresteria of Villa Valmarana ai Nani, Vicenza, 1757. Detail

programme: plans, renovation management of a holiday home.

client: private commission

team: sophia los

collaborators: giovanni baron

city/area: sottomarina, Italy

status: completed, 2017

The project dealt with the renovation and the interior design for a holiday flat. The inside walls CalceCanapa (hemp & lime) lining, and subsequent limewashing optimised the internal healthiness of a humid space. The apartment had to be minimalistic, functional and bright. The corridors, like the stairwells and entrances, are transitional spaces, often dark and empty. Often, they are just the right spots to introduce splashes of colour, to make shadows colourful. In this instance, I suggested the corridor be like diving into the sea. The commissioners, however, did not like blue tints, so we picked variations of the colour green. The corridor features fitted wardrobes and doors. 

In the children’s room, a table was designed and illustrated by Davide Charlie Ceccon

Photos: Alberto Sinigaglia

programme: plans, interiors construction management for a new single-family residential building.

client: private commission

team: sophia los

collaborators: giovanni baron, marta stocco

city/area: polverara (PD), Italy

status: completed, 2017

We intervened when the property was still unfinished, re-defining the room layout as much as possible, taking care of the finishes, detailing, and fitted furnishings. The skirting is the fil rouge of the project, and it features a “string course” trimming the wall while occasionally turning into a service space handle. The rows of beige-toned and white stripes on the staircase level and in the living room accompany you visually as you climb the stairs, and they also shorten the long corridor on the ground floor. The neutral base meets a more lively look in the bathrooms, whose colours were expertly picked by the children. Subsequently, we designed the children’s bedrooms after a long discussion with them. The comic artist Davide Charlie Ceccon suggested his original characters Bilbo and Batbilbo for the boy’s room while he created a new ad hoc character, Margherita, who he also added to his subsequent children’s comics.

The living room tabletop, designed by the studio, is by Elisabetta Carron.

Photos: Alberto Sinigaglia

programme: plans, interiors & garden construction management.

client: private commission

team: sophia los, luca parolin (garden), massimo asci (building)

city/area: pontelongo, italy

status: completed, 2005 – garden 2007

Two sisters put me in charge of handling the interior design of their two-family home (a colleague’s project) under construction and its garden. The two homes reflect the sisters’ different personalities and conceive identical volumes as if they were variations on the same theme, moving from the women’s distinct needs, desires and orientation. The first house features neutral tones, while two chromatic hints, the complementary colours red and green, are used, one at the entrance and one for the staircase behind the small fireplace. We designed the children’s bedrooms – which we entrusted to the artist Elisabetta Carron – in both homes, plus all the finishings and the bespoke furniture.  The dining table is her design, as well. In the garden – which recalls the rural landscape – close to the house, we designed a section for herbs and roses. The large lawn facing the living room integrates the surrounding landscape thanks to some trees guiding your eyes in the distance.

programme: plans, interiors & garden construction management.

client: private commission

team: sophia los, luca parolin (garden), massimo asci (building)

city/area: pontelongo, italy

status: completed, 2005, garden 2007

Two sisters put me in charge of handling the interior design of their two-family home (a colleague’s project) under construction and its garden. The two homes reflect the sisters’ different personalities and conceive identical volumes as if they were variations on the same theme, moving from the women’s distinct needs, desires and orientation. The second house features chartreuse green paired with other fresh tones, like lavender and a shade of green chosen to brighten the staircase. We designed the children’s bedrooms – which we entrusted to the artist Elisabetta Carron – for both homes, plus the finishings and the bespoke furniture. A notable piece is a table featuring a pierced centre with a vase inserted for flowers, fruit or as a glacette. The table has recently become a limited series item produced by Il Tuo Legno https://www.iltuolegno.it/serie-limitata/.

The gardens flank a shared area between two private spaces and feature an orchard at the entrance and a romantic secret garden with rose varieties.

photos: alberto sinigaglia and sophia los

programme: plans, renovation management of a flat in the city centre 

client: private commission

team: sophia los

collaborators: gianluca rosso, carlo zambonin (structures), cristian cipriotto

city/area: padua, italy

status: completed, 2018

Renovation of a flat in Padua’s historical city centre. The flat had been set up in the 1970s and needed a reconfiguration to fit the new owner’s needs. To better the inner micro-climate – Padua is often very damp – we insulated the walls with lime hemp, a natural material with excellent hygroscopic qualities, and then painted their surfaces with lime wash. All the materials had the goal of achieving a healthy, comfortable space. The new planimetric layout recalls the traditional palaces of Veneto, modernised and articulated around a central hall. This way, we provided ample and pleasant spaces and lovely ventilation in the summer.

programme: plans, garden and interiors construction management.

client: private commission

team: sophia los, luca parolin.

collaborators: marta stocco

city/area: mussolente, Italy

status: completed, 2012

The owner was one of my first commissioners and, more importantly, someone who believed in me. I created designs for her for another house before and other big and small things for this property over more than ten years. Our stimulating conversations, as well as her affection and esteem, are very precious. The property belongs to an estate of exclusive detached houses situated in a scenic area at the foothills. The chance to renovate the garden came from the need to reclaim the rather clayed ground – which caused prolonged water stagnation during the rain – by draining the whole property. We highlighted and strengthened the various house aspects, bettering the integration between the inside and outside. Simultaneously, the project included moving the street access to the side, enhancing the previously neglected east face. The ensuing outlook frames the woods at the back. The southern lawn was raised to reduce the ‘hill effect’ as much as possible while exploiting the height of the existing little boundary wall.

The new garden aimed at connecting the hill and the frontal levels, previously distinct and uninhabited, now joint in one big floor. The floored level organises the entire composition around the building, and, as it rotates, it introduces a series of visual anchors and new viewpoints, enriching the perception of paths and rest areas while dilating the boundary between the house and the open space. In parallel, we carried out many interventions inside, such as the great south window, the tapestry/door in the living room, the insolation regulating panel under the portico, the stone vase-table, the wooden wall in the master bedroom (a great tree protecting from the cold north wall, echoing the outside woods).

programme: plans and shop renovation management.

client: focus

team: sophia los

city/area: bassano del grappa (VI), italy

status: completed, 1996

The Focus shop renovation was a big bet. I had recently graduated when the owner – my dear friend Romano Zanon’s father – trustingly put his shop into my hands. Situated in Piazza Libertà in Bassano del Grappa, the establishment was a staple for porcelain and crystalware, known in the whole of Northern Italy and frequented by educated and elegant customers. The challenge was re-using the existing unmatched shelving units and finding a coherent design to layout the products in a new and orderly way. First of all, I moved the entrance to the side, making use of the small portico outside, allowing people to linger by the shop window, and suggested a path among the various types of merchandise inside. Alongside pear and oakwood, I chose three recurrent shades as backdrops to the product layouts, alternating the wood with textiles from the Renata Bonfanti workshop. I singled out a shelving system, separating the structure and the front, allowing me to uniform the furniture, old and new. Many years later, the “Maschera” bookshelf, designed for Morelato, came to life from this initial concept. The lighting placed between the front and back structure by the owner proved an excellent solution. When we completed the works, the owner said to me: “I never understood, Sophia, whether you accepted this difficult job because you are brave or because you are crazy”. After 55 years of activity, the shop moved into new premises managed by Romano in 2011, just a few hundred metres away from the original site.

programme: concept, preliminary and executive architectural design, interior and landscape design

client: eco surf resort, lda

team: sophia los

collaborators: Engineering Tisem, Luis Henrique Dos Santos, Maria Filomena De Jesus Miranda Frade, Natasha F. Pulitzer, Luca Vecchiato, Chiara Dal Molin, Marta Stocco, Patrizia Callegari and Giuseppe Baruzzo

location: Peniche, Portugal

status: completed, 2014

To be a guest of nature.

The eco-surf camp was built inside a natural reserve 2 km away from the ocean, making it a popular destination for surfers and people fond of ecotourism, in a territory of great food-and-wine, landscape and cultural interest. The four-star village, immersed in the woods, features a surf-house (restaurant, large multifunctional hall, spa area), the keeper’s lodge, a service building, seven bungalows and eighteen custom-made tents (glamping), as well a Skatepark, a bio-lake and a permaculture garden. The village is entirely built with wood. The guests’ opportunity to dwell in areas of outstanding natural and environmental beauty allows for new experiences like restoring a healthy relationship with nature or strengthening the senses. Offering an unusual housing experience highlights the uniqueness of the holiday, as guests live inside tree houses on stilts, enjoying the open spaces, or witness the recovery of existing traditional housing types. The project means to harmonize anthropological and technological aspects. The village generates an ecosystem complementary to the woods, implementing a management model that controls interactions between the buildings and the environment, ensuring input and output balance as much as possible, making buildings increasingly autonomous from infrastructures and resources.

The project was carried out with European funds.

programme: concept, final plans and construction management of the interiors and the garden.

client: private commission

team: Sophia Los

collaborators: aldo marzoli, renza mara calabrese, giovanni pesamosca (wooden structure )

city/area: madonna di campiglio, Italy

status: completed, 2011

For this project, we collaborated with a local architect. The villa is organised on three floors, including a basement, and presents various orographic complexities. We designed the building along with the interiors and the garden. The house, clad in local larch wood from the ground level up, was conceived like a large scale piece of furniture where we took care of every aesthetic, building, functional detail following bio-architectural principles. The building construction uses Xlam, and the electrical, plumbing and HVAC plans were laid out very carefully alongside the furniture to reduce the false walls containing the systems and highlighting the natural wood effect to the maximum. The chosen panels feature high-performance eco-compatible properties. Doors, windows and cladding were left purposely unfinished so the house could age naturally. The roof shingles and granite cladding were made according to the valley’s traditional techniques, bringing in the last available workers skilled in these processes. Moving away from Alto Adige traditions and closer to those in Trento, the house takes after some of the themes in Val Rendena, applying them to both balconies and interiors.

programme: preliminary plans, internal feasibility study, final plans of the inner courtyard.

client: kurtin farm

team: sophia Los, gianluca rosso, filippo piovene (phase two)

collaborators: giovanni baron, andrea marin (structures)

city/area: cormons (GO), italy

status: ongoing

The practice has been involved in this project since 2017, handling the general redefinition of the whole complex (2017), then beginning the first set of interventions in the production courtyard inside (2020). The project is ongoing, adapting to new needs and possibilities that arise over time as completion progresses.

The Kurtin winery began as a farm, starting from a stone house – now demolished – and other farm annexes integrating other extensions over time. A centuries-old oak – like a guardian – captures your attention and stands next to the cellar’s entrance. The project intends to highlight some pre-existing elements of the site that are not currently visible, only waiting to be discovered.

First of all, one has the sensation of entering a “borgo” (medieval farm). This articulated configuration, unlike that of a single object, has become the project’s central theme. The project expresses this theme by organizing three “squares” surrounded by buildings: the production court to the east, the reception court with a belvedere to the west connecting to the third court on the lower level by a staircase.

Observing the “borghi” castles, and strongholds typical of the Gorizia Hills, we can find some recurrent elements: small settlements on top of the hills and towers rooted in the slopes, like vertical elements acting as a counterpoint to the soft shapes of the hilly countryside.

Here in the valley, a turret will signal the “borgo’s” presence, becoming its fundamental vertical axis. The old house, still made of stone, is presented anew, now slightly moved to function as a door unifying the estate on the mountainside with the newly acquired valley side.

Walking alongside the turret, you reach the cellar entrance, a low horizontal building characterized by simple, white volumes: the centre of attention here is the wine, not the architecture.

For this project, we brought in Davide Charlie Ceccon to design the wine labels presented at Vinitaly 2019. 

programme: co-artistic direction, displays, furniture design

client: benè sentieri di benessere, morelato srl

team: sophia los

city/area: vicenza – italy

status: completed, 2006

The suite belongs to the broader project for the whole Benè – Sentieri di Benessere expo, which in 2006 included a pavilion called “Bené Wellness Resort, il Benessere Oltre la Spa”, curated by Stefano Pediconi. On that occasion, various architects designed a range of suites, unveiled at the expo.

The concept for the project comes from the desire to present hosts with a room including a small garden acting as the cardinal symbol of wellness.

The suite is a large bedroom placed between the volume of the bathroom and the winter garden.

The bathroom volume appears like a full-height wooden tapestry, hiding the sliding door that makes it possible to access the room from the shower.

The bedroom’s central element is the natural cherry wood four-poster bed, Tobia bed, designed by Sophia Los for Morelato. The bathroom is in white stone, and it features a panel made of multiple agate round pieces, acting as a backdrop to the shower. The panel is backlit, thus resembling a thousand eyes gazing at the room when the sliding door is open. The piece recalls Klimt paintings and has a remarkable chromatic effect.

Morelato Arredamenti created the wooden tapestry after a custom design, a reinterpretation of the “Zero” series, conceived to produce a dynamic wall. The effect is achieved by placing wooden laths according to an irregular pattern. The four-poster bed was presented as a prototype during the expo and was dressed with textiles by Dominique Kieffer for Rubelli, here proposing a dedicated eco-friendly line. The materials used to paint walls were eco-friendly products supplied by Spring Color. Mandruzzato Marmi made the bathroom, and Punto Verde provided the plants for the veranda. Porceilain sets by l’IDEA – Vicenza.

programme: expo displays, design and interiors construction management for the showroom, executive plans for the new office building

client: belflowers Srl

team: sophia los, renza mara calabrese, sabina bonfanti, davide charlie ceccon

collaborators: marta stocco

city/area: pontelongo (PD) – italy

status: completed, 2009 -2016

Belflowers is a company based in Padua specializing in artificial flowers. I designed many exhibition stands for them between 2009 and 2017. Together with architect Sabina Bonfanti, we planned the first editions (2009-2010), creating great lampshades covered with sunflowers, produced by Oltremondano. Sabina curated the logo restyling, choosing the sunflower as the iconic element for the company communication and branding. She arranged autumnal and Christmas panels using flowers.

Many were the theme’s incarnations for the various expos of the sector. In 2015 – for HOMI Milan – I conceived a floral ceiling with flower balls.

In 2011, I designed the new office building with Renza Mara Calabrese, although sadly, the plan never went ahead. The company preferred to renovate the interiors with a light restyling of the existing premises in 2014: for the lobby, I proposed a version of the playful sunflowers theme.

In 2016, Davide Charlie Ceccon collaborated with me in creating a Christmas-themed retail area, where his large scale illustrations gave life to an evocative, spectacular, expressive space.

Stand production: Europstand (Leopoldo Agostini)

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programme: interiors for a restaurant in the historic centre of vicenza 

client: il molo restaurant.

team: sophia los

city/area: vicenza, italy

status: completed, 2011

The project relates to the interiors of a small restaurant in the historic city centre of Vicenza. The budget available was rather limited. The two owners – a Sicilian Chef and his partner – actively worked on the construction site, carrying out some works themselves. The furniture realised by 101 – Alberto Beggio, a carpenter and yoga teacher, was built almost entirely on-site. The construction site turned into a workshop throughout the fitting-out processes that included the careful selection of bio-compatible materials. The restaurant – rather unique in town – is highly appreciated by a wide, heterogeneous public made of students, families, tourists, office workers on lunch break, professionals and the upper class.

A central feature in the project is the bench, designed with uneven bands showing the classic colours of inland Sicily to visually reduce the perception of the restaurant’s considerable length while also increasing the space’s acoustic comfort. A strip of backlit photos showing Sicilian landscapes gives the place a typical taste of the island, welcoming the guests in a unique way. Several were Federica Agnoletto – Freaks of Nature’s interventions, some of which were included in the initial project (a door, the ceiling and stairs, linen), while others were added on the commissioners’ request some years later when they decided to renovate the interiors.