This article is part of our special Design section about new interpretations of vintage design styles.
One could describe Andrew Trotter’s passion for Puglia, in southern Italy, as a slow burn. The British, Barcelona-based designer first visited the region, which forms the heel of Italy’s geographic boot, about a decade ago. His good friend Carlo Lanzini planned to create a boutique hotel that would cater to the growing number of travelers drawn by Puglia’s charming medieval villages, its sun-bleached landscape with ancient olive grove and its nearly 500 miles of coastline, featuring beautiful coves with limestone cliffs and beautiful sandy beaches.
Mr. asked for help. Lanzini in finding and renovating a masseria, the name of the traditional whitewashed farmhouse found in the Pugliese countryside. “We went twice, both times in the winter, and I didn’t really like it,” said Mr. Trotter. “It’s a place that grew on me rather than an instant love.”
At that time, Mr. Trotter, who is 51, recently left a career in fashion, launched a short-lived Barcelona design store and co-founded Openhouse, a boutique and gallery that became a biannual interior and lifestyle magazine, with her friend . Mari Luz Vidal, a photographer. Having studied interior design and spent a year at Anouska Hempel’s London firm in the early ’90s, it was a return to her roots.
When Mr. finally decided Lanzini to build a new masseria-inspired building for his hotel venture, near the town of Ostuni, Mr. Trotter himself supervised its design. After some convincing, he got the carriage, and the resulting six guest rooms Masseria Moroseta “became famous very quickly,” as Mr. Trotter, leading other commissions in the design and renovation of holiday homes in Puglia, including Mr. Lanzini as well as new clients who admire Mr.’s minimalist yet warm aesthetic. Trotter.
While Studio Andrew Trotter soon had projects in locations around the world, Mr. Trotter and his domestic partner — the firm’s business manager, Marcelo Martinez, 31, who is Spanish — continued to travel to Puglia regularly. They decided to find a place to live in the region that would serve as their base and as a rental property when they weren’t using it. Their search led them to the southern Pugliese town of Soleto, in the middle of the Salento peninsula, where a century-old house, hidden in a cobbled alley, caught their attention. “The town is very sleepy, and it’s something I like about the real south of Puglia, which is very unturistic. In the smaller villages, it’s like you’re in a movie, like ‘Cinema Paradiso,'” says Mr. Trotter, adding, “We are the youngest people in Soleto.”
Even though someone had already made an offer on the house, the couple convinced the agent to let them look. Behind the front wall and arched stone gate with large wooden doors, an open-air courtyard served as the entrance to the two-story residence. Gradually expanded over time, the house included two vaulted chapels, one estimated to be 400 years old, while parts of the upper floor are believed to have been added as recently as the 1920s.
The family that once owned the property had long since disused it, but many of their possessions remained, untouched. “There are clothes and furniture, artwork, family photos,” said Mr. Trotter. “But for about 20 years, no one came to the house. Nothing worked. No running water, no electricity. There is a hole in the back garden where the sewage went.”
Not to mention, there was only one bathroom, the walls were shaking and rotting, and the only way to go up to the second floor was through an outdoor staircase in the front yard. “That quirkiness is what gives the house its charm,” Mr. Martinez said. Features like a 15-foot vaulted ground-floor ceiling gave the interior character and mood that a glance at the plans and snapshots didn’t reveal.
Also, the house was exactly the size they wanted, and it had a garden with enough space for a small pool. When other offers fell through, they “just went for it,” Mr. Trotter. (He declined to say how much the couple paid for the property.)
Mr. Trotter and Mr. Martinez, who discussed the project on Zoom from Barcelona, set about updating the home for contemporary living, making it comfortable and rustic in style, while retaining as many elements as possible to maintain the home’s unique and historic feel. They called it Casa Soleto.
For convenience and rentability, they added three baths upstairs so each bedroom has its own, plus a powder room on the ground floor, all of which meant installing extensive plumbing. New electrical systems were installed, though lighting was kept to a minimum. Many of the antique doors and existing floors – terrazzo tiles or polished concrete – have been preserved, and parts of the roof and walls have been renovated.
On the ground floor, where simple walls were built with stones and earth up to three feet thick, Mr. Trotter and Mr. Martinez to replace the expanses of cement plaster added in the last century that draws moisture inside. Throughout the house the walls are refinished in lightly textured lime plasters or washes, in earthy tones ranging from dusty beige to chocolate brown to pale green. Everything was done by Domingue Architectural Finishes, one of several companies that partnered on the couple’s project.
Scandinavian furniture company Frama has provided a range of clean-lined wooden tables, chairs and stools that complement a combination of antiques and simple upholstered chairs dressed in solid, neutral linen. Australian carpet maker Armadillo supplied the jute rugs found in most rooms. (In exchange for their contributions, companies can use Casa Soleto’s photos and stories in their marketing.)
Mr. Trotter and Mr. Martinez, who spoke by phone and on Zoom, kept some of the furniture left behind by the previous owners, including large wooden gun cases they used as coffee tables, several beds with distinctive headboard and, in the largest bedroom. , a glass-front cabinet filled with old books collected by the doctor who once owned the house.
Resisting the urge to modernize the kitchen, they instead worked with local craftsmen to restore the wooden cabinets, repaint them for additional storage, and create fronts for the built-in refrigerator. and dishwasher. They installed an ILVE range that was “pretty old school,” Mr. Martinez said. “The goal was to make everything functional and up-to-date, but not trying to make something too contemporary or out of place.”
The couple used an ample amount of artwork left hanging on the walls, a mix of unrelated landscapes, still lifes and portraits. But they also commissioned new works from Eleanor Herbosch, an Antwerp-based artist who made three abstract paintings mixing ink with soil dug from under the house and from the garden.
The works of Ms. Herbosch features prominently in the atmospheric dining room, which occupies the rear of the two chapels, at the front of the house, and a cozy lounge in the older chapel at the back, where they opted for a darker, moodier palette . “We wanted it to be a little bit like a cave where you could go and watch a movie or just hang out, read a book,” said Mr. Trotter.
The garden has been completely reimagined, with a plunge pool and plantings chosen with advice from London landscape designer Luciano Giubbilei. A terrace connected to the largest bedroom overlooks the garden, while a smaller balcony off the front bedroom offers views of the nearby Gothic bell tower commissioned by medieval nobleman Raimondo Orsini del Balzo. “It goes off at 6:30 every morning, and on Sundays it’s not just a simple bong-bong-bong,” said Mr. Trotter. “It’s continuous, every 20 minutes.”
Completed in July, Casa Soleto took two years to renovate, and there is nothing like it in town. “The mayor and the priest came to look at the house,” said Mr. Trotter. “The Italians want to make everything new and perfect, and we did it in a way that I think is still old, so I don’t think they understand it.” But for him and Mr. Martinez, he added, “true luxury is not about being too perfect.”