Erica Fossati Design

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United States
Lancaster, MA
Erica Fossati Design

I'm an Italian architectural and interior designer.

I can help you with your residential reno/new construction by designing tailored solutions from the schematic plans to the furniture selection, managing all steps for a smooth process.

05/29/2026

If someone had told me when I graduated from the Politecnico that I would one day be based in Massachusetts helping Americans buy and restore dilapidated Italian villas, I would have told them they had too much imagination.
And yet here we are. This is the story of how it happened and why I think foreign buyers are often the best thing that can happen to an abandoned Italian property.
New post on the blog, link in bio.

05/01/2026

I have been a licensed architect in Italy since before I moved to Boston.
My license never expired, my network never disappeared, and my sister still runs the firm where I used to work in Brianza, so when I say I have people on the ground in Italy, I mean it literally.
For a while I was only using all of that informally, helping friends here in the US who were considering buying or restoring property in Italy and didn't know where to start. Then I realized I could make it an actual service, for anyone who needs someone in their corner. Someone who speaks the language, knows the codes, and can explain what the Italian professionals are finding in terms that actually make sense to an American buyer.
So I made it official. Property assessments and Renovation services in Italy for American buyers, expats, and investors.
Link in bio.

04/21/2026

Something I find fascinating is that no matter who walks through my door, no matter their background or taste or how long they've been thinking about this, the kitchen renovation conversation always starts exactly the same way. Pinterest. An island. A quartz sample they're fairly attached to. New post on the blog: how I actually plan it, in the order the decisions should be made. Layout first, stone yard second, and a volcanic lava stone from the Auvergne that nobody I know yet has had the guts to use. Link in bio.

04/14/2026

I am pathologically obsessive about color. Which means I have never been on the job site where the contractor painted the entire side of the house the wrong color before anyone noticed the green cast. I intend to keep it that way.
So I built this thing, I took every color in the Historic Colors of America collection, the definitive period-accurate paint palette for New England homes, 11 architectural periods from Colonial to International Style, and matched each one to the closest Benjamin Moore equivalent using a weighted color-distance algorithm. Then I turned it into a PDF you can actually use on a project.
It is free, it is thorough, and it will save you from sending a fax across the centuries.
Link in bio.

04/07/2026

Your historic home doesn't want an antique sofa.
I know that sounds controversial. But if you keep the original plasterwork and the hand-hewn beams and the plaster medallions, the last thing the room needs is furniture that is also trying to tell a story about lineage and status. The room is already doing that. What it needs is a non-compete agreement.
Historic architecture and contemporary furniture don't fight, they're in conversation. The architecture brings ornament and history. The furniture brings restraint and materiality. Neither is trying to do what the other does.
New blog post is up, it has Carlo Scarpa, Adolf Loos, Antonio Citterio, a job interview I probably shouldn't brag about, and the reason your 1890s Colonial in Concord doesn't need a reproduction Windsor chair.
Also these images. Because we all deserve to dream a little.
Link in bio.
Swipe for more -- Palazzo Martinengo della Motella in Brescia, Maxalto Heritage Perspectives by Antonio Citterio, Palazzo Petrvs in Orvieto, Roberto Baciocchi's home in Tuscany, and Palazzo Contarini Bombassei in Venice. All photographed by Simon Watson except the Maxalto images.

03/31/2026

This mirror was made by hand, four generations ago, by a great-great grandfather I never met. It crossed an ocean and ended up above a piano in Lancaster, Massachusetts.
I have a new post up about why I hate trends, why the most ecological renovation is the one you don't do, and why that chair your grandmother left you is almost certainly worth keeping.
Also featuring William Morris, Enzo Mari, a 1920s Bauhaus drama, and a vendor who once told me a sofa was so hot this year. Link in bio.

03/28/2026

You bought a house in Massachusetts. Congratulazioni! You are now also the owner of everything that was done to it before you arrived, the good decisions, the bad ones, the 1987 addition, the kitchen that made sense to someone once and no longer makes sense to anyone, and possibly the asbestos floor tiles.

I just published a guide for this moment, the one where you are standing in your new house wondering where to even begin. It covers the inspection you probably waived and should immediately go get, how to find out if your house has historic protections you did not know existed, why the order of your renovation decisions matters more than you think, and what interior design actually is, because it is not what most people think.

Vitruvius makes an appearance so worth reading.

Link in bio.

03/22/2026

This is a bow window in a Italianate home in Harvard, MA. Original millwork, original panels, original floors. Nobody is legally required to preserve any of it.
New blog post is up, it's about why you probably shouldn't gut a historic home even if nobody is stopping you. Lime plaster, old growth timber, a 1980s Tudor disaster, and a very controversial salami, ricchi premi e cotillon. Link in bio.

03/15/2026

I asked AI to generate images of bad 1970s additions to historic homes in New England and she absolutely delivered. Including one with a lightning storm that I did not ask for and that I chose to interpret as editorial commentary.

New post on the journal: why so many additions from the 1960s, 70s and 80s look wrong, where the intellectual permission slip came from, and the only two honest ways to fix it. Viollet-le-Duc, vulgarized theory, asbestos siding, and a contractor who said hold my beer.

Link in bio. 🔗 ericafossati.com

03/12/2026

New post on the journal. Ten mistakes that will get your Certificate of Appropriateness application rejected and your designer sent to Hades.
Historic district commissions are not your enemies.
They are made of erudite volunteers who would love nothing more than to say yes to a well-prepared application.
The problem is that most applications give them very little to work with.
Link in bio. 🔗 ericafossati.com

Address

Lancaster, MA
01523

Website

http://www.ericafossati.com/, https://ericafossati.com/journal-modern-interior-design-renovations-boston-resources, http

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