Villa Serena

A nineteenth-century villa on the western shore of Como, reopened to its own light. We stripped a century of subdivision back to the original enfilade, then set a single material line — oak underfoot, travertine at the thresholds — to carry the eye from the entry hall to the lake beyond.

Every opening was recalculated around the water: sightlines lowered, sills deepened, a loggia recovered from a filled-in arch. The result is a house that seems to have always framed this view, where the architecture recedes and the landscape becomes the ornament.

“A room should hold the light the way the lake holds the mountains — quietly, completely.”