Multi-Disciplinary Designer Paolo Ferrari on Balancing Innovation & Familiarity
“I’ve always felt struck by architecture. I’ve always been perplexed by architecture, I’ll say,” confides Paolo Ferrari, founder of the interior design studio that bears his name. “At a very young age, it was the one thing I was always confounded by. It felt like the most wondrous thing, to build spaces.”
Ferrari, the son of Italian immigrants who moved to Canada in the 1970s, grew up in awe of the built environment — the churches in Italy, when he and his family would go visit, as well as the buildings of 1980s Toronto, a period in which the metropolis was marked by bold architectural projects. “There was something really wondrous about Ontario Place […] it was this futurist, crazy place,” says Ferrari. Designed by German-Canadian architect Eberhard Zeidler, the theme park consisted of interlinked square pods suspended over the water. “It’s a great example of architecture elevating an aspect that isn’t the most exciting — because at the end of the day, it was built as an amusement park,” Ferrari explains. “But it was really sophisticated for the function it was serving.”

It’s this vision-forward elevation of familiar environments that would, in many ways, go on to define Ferrari’s career. In the near-decade since Studio Paolo Ferrari was founded, the design firm has made a name for itself with its ambitious, globally minded portfolio prominently featuring hospitality projects. The studio’s work on Daphne, a downtown restaurant in Ferrari’s home base of Toronto, feels more like a reinvention of the idea of a restaurant than a mere redesign. The restaurant’s custom-made furniture and lighting, through a series of atmosphere-distinct rooms, grants the space a uniqueness and sense of presence that almost makes the food superfluous.
“We never want anything to feel alien. I think this idea of ‘new’ is about balancing the new with something a bit more familiar.”
Paolo Ferrari
In Saudi Arabia, on the coast of the Red Sea, the studio recently worked on two projects an hour away from each other, both of which are just as likely to be dream settings as resorts. For the first, Desert Rock, the studio designed the interiors of a hotel wedged into the side of a mountain — the rooms feature luxurious furniture and textiles in soft colours that blend seamlessly with the bulging rock that intrudes directly inside. The other, Shebara, is a series of dark-coloured pods floating above the water, like alien eggs in a science fiction film. The guest room interiors, designed by the studio, contrast beach sand–white furniture and floors with reflective metallic surfaces, like a mini-bar made from polished steel cantilevered to the wall.
Through all the studio’s projects, there exists an unlikely combination of newness and nostalgia, the two sentiments building on each other rather than competing. It’s this combination that enables something like the Long Bar at the Raffles Hotel in Boston, which the studio recently worked on, to feel simultaneously like an homage to early 20th-century American design and a vision from the future.

Ferrari describes his work as living between timelessness and courageous invention. “We never want anything to feel alien. I think this idea of ‘new’ is about balancing the new with something a bit more familiar,” says Ferrari. To avoid intimidating visitors, an anchor needs to be placed in more familiar aesthetic markers — only with this anchor in place can uncharted territory be explored without becoming lost in the unknown.
For a studio with such an international focus, with projects currently in the works in Crete, Puerto Rico, Dubai, and Hong Kong, manoeuvring this balance becomes particularly important — constructing familiar anchors for a project in Saudi Arabia is different than for one in Toronto. “The trick is to not fall into cliches,” says Ferrari. “To be really sensitive and subtle in how it happens.” For the interiors of Desert Rock, the studio built in understated references to Saudi culture through textiles, and used sand-cast hardware, a touch point that connects the interiors back to the geography around the resort. “When you start uncovering these things, it uncovers this richness in the design because things are rooted in ideas,” says Ferrari.
“That a crude idea started from this little spark, that turned into lines on a piece of paper, that turned into more detailed design, that turned into documentation that a group of collaborators have to execute — it’s magic.”
Paolo Ferrari
This idea-rooted conception of design results in interiors bearing a distinctly cinematic quality, something that Ferrari channels intentionally — he’s said that the design of Daphne restaurant was inspired by the works of directors Stanley Kubrick and Nancy Meyers. “Film is the [purer] version of what we do,” says Ferrari. “Every aspect is so expertly controlled. Everything is so absolutely intentional. When you think about design, it is about wanting to, in a way, control every aspect of an experience.” Ferrari believes that going forward, it’s these types of immersive experiences that are going to steer the field of luxury hospitality: “I think consumers are savvier than they’ve ever been. They’re ultra well-travelled. They’re more adventurous than they’ve ever been. And I think they’re looking for different things.”
Despite now having much experience in the field, Ferrari still carries a sense of wonder about the built environment that he had growing up. “The idea of building anything is really amazing,” says Ferrari. “That a crude idea started from this little spark, that turned into lines on a piece of paper, that turned into more detailed design, that turned into documentation that a group of collaborators have to execute — it’s magic.”



This wonder might have something to do with consistently pursuing challenging projects. For the Raffles Long Bar in Boston, the studio wanted to create the bar from travertine — an old material touching on the longevity of the hotel brand, which dates back to the golden age of travel in the 1800s. The difficulty was, being up on the 17th floor, the heavy material couldn’t be supported by the floor’s slab. Instead of scaling back to a lighter material, they worked out a solution that involved the top half of the stone being suspended from the slab above, without a visible break. “Sounds crazy,” Ferrari summarizes with enthusiasm.
This commitment to the vision above all else can be sensed in the spaces the studio creates. It is the quality that makes you want to stop and marvel — with the same sense of amazement as, say, a child might have standing before a structure so perplexing it seems like it was created by magic.
Feature photo by Joel Esposito.