Catalogue

Stories by Clara Solano, Estudio Solano

Umbria, Italy

Preview - A Small House in the Hills

The client bought the house on the basis of a photograph. She had never been to Umbria. She arrived to find a structure that had not been inhabited since the 1970s, with no running water, no electricity, and a roof that was structurally adequate in summer only.

Paris, France

Preview - For the Collector Who Lives Lightly

The brief was a paradox: my client owns seven hundred objects — paintings, prints, ceramics, glass — and wanted a home that felt empty. He had been offered advice by every designer he had ever met, and had declined it all, choosing instead to live in a series of rented apartments where he could hang things freely without committing to walls.

Madrid, Spain

Preview - The Madrid House That Learned to Wait

The brief arrived three years before I could take the project. The owner — a retired magistrate — had bought a nineteenth-century townhouse in Chamberí, gutted it to bare concrete and brick, and then stopped. He wanted to wait until he found someone who understood what he was doing.

New York, USA

Preview - Light and Quiet in Manhattan

I first saw the apartment in February. The broker had left a window open and there was snow on the sill. The bones were extraordinary: original cast-iron columns, fourteen-foot ceilings, north light flooding through factory windows that hadn't been replaced since the 1920s. The clients — a couple who collect contemporary ceramics — wanted something that would hold their objects without competing with them.

The main living volume, looking toward the original factory windows — Clara Solano

New York, NY

Preview - A Manhattan Loft Finds Its Quiet

I first saw the apartment in February. The broker had left a window open and there was snow on the sill, which I took as a sign of something — honesty, maybe. The bones were extraordinary: original cast-iron columns, fourteen-foot ceilings, north light flooding through factory windows that hadn't been replaced since the 1920s. The clients, a couple in their late forties who collect contemporary ceramics, wanted something that would hold their objects without competing with them.