A Total Approach to Design
The Project reveals what is already present, enhances its identity, embodies a sense of place, inspires rituals, grounds its inhabitants in the physical reality of the present, and supports their well-being.
Art and Architecture: An Inseparable Dialogue
Contemporary art and architecture are not parallel disciplines—they are ongoing conversations, and always have been. One inhabits the other, questions it, provokes it, and enriches it in a relationship of reciprocity that goes far beyond simple aesthetic coexistence. Architecture defines the space in which art breathes: the light passing through a window, the proportion of a wall, the texture of a floor are never neutral backdrops, but active elements that condition the way a work is perceived, experienced, felt. Similarly, contemporary art has the capacity to reveal what architecture alone cannot express—to add tension, poetry, inquiry where the project has left space.
For the studio, this relationship is central and structural. Every project begins with the awareness that the designed spaces will also be inhabited by artworks, that surfaces will dialogue with the colors and volumes of sculptures, that the choice of an installation can complete—or radically transform—the identity of an environment. For this reason, art enters the design process from the earliest stages, not as a decorative element to be added at the end, but as an active interlocutor in defining the space.
It is this integrated vision that has led Nobis and Penazzi to build over time a network of relationships with curators, galleries, and artists, capable of offering clients authentic guidance in the world of contemporary art—not as an additional service, but as a natural extension of the same design culture.
This is complemented by a program of studio visits and galleries organized between Milan and Switzerland: private meetings in artists’ ateliers, moments of direct dialogue with the work and those who produce it, opportunities to build a collection with awareness and critical perspective. An experience that transforms acquisition into a genuine cultural journey.
Vintage and Contemporary Boats
The attention to materials, memory, and atmosphere that characterizes every studio project finds a privileged territory of expression in the world of yachting. Sofia and Stefano collaborate with shipowners and shipyards for the customization of vintage and contemporary vessels: from redesigning interiors to selecting finishes, from designing bespoke furnishings to refining construction details. Each boat is treated as an inhabited architecture, with the same conceptual depth and the same artisanal sensitivity that distinguishes their buildings.
Gardens and Green Spaces
The boundary between interior and exterior is, for the studio, a threshold to be crossed with continuity. The design of gardens and green spaces is an integral part of their vision: landscapes conceived as extensions of living, capable of dialoguing with architecture, responding to climate and context, creating places for pause, contemplation, and outdoor life. Every intervention in greenery is conceived with the same care devoted to interior spaces, interweaving botany, composition, and atmosphere.
