Renaissance man: five lessons learnt from building a dream home

Stefano Tozzi spent seven years creating this spectacular family home from the fly loft of a 19th-century Florentine theatre tower. Just steps away from the Palazzo Pitti – the vast former home of the Medici family – he’s designed and built a 6,500 square foot ‘work of art’, deftly balancing his local Sienese heritage with Japanese minimalism.

Designed using strict Japanese modular architecture principles, it offers a show-stealing 20-tonne suspended swimming pool that filters light through the triple-height living area, lined with warm teak and walnut.

 The co-founder of AE5 Partners, an architecture practice that blends Japanese and Italian design principles, Tozzi drew on a 30-year career that’s seen him collaborate with architectural luminaries such as Daniel Libeskind, Zaha Hadid and Arata Isozaki. 

But, what did Tozzi learn from this particularly challenging project? And what would he do differently if he was given this project again?

1. Constraints are rarely absolute, if you understand them well enough
   

At first glance, the project seemed impossible. Planning rules appeared to prohibit converting the former warehouse into a residence. Advisors urged Tozzi to walk away. Instead, he examined the regulations line by line – and found a solution.

“I used the first room of the unit as a garage and that created a sort of ‘buffer zone’ – very similar to that of a stairwell in an apartment building,” Tozzi explains. By reimagining the entrance sequence to the property, he was able to create a design that satisfied the letter of the law while preserving the spirit of his vision.

For private clients, take note: constraints – whether regulatory, structural or financial – are rarely as impassable as they might first appear. The key often lies in the depth of understanding you can bring to bear, and in the confidence to challenge design or planning conventions in a constructive way.

2. Every project resets the rulebook

While a creative approach to problem-solving is key, so is a willingness to accept you don’t know everything – even if, like Tozzi, you’re a past master in transforming complicated properties.

“Every project starts again from scratch,” Tozzi says. “Within a few months, you often have to relearn everything.” In other words: What worked before may not apply again.

For globally mobile homeowners – often building across jurisdictions – this is particularly relevant. Assumptions carried from one project to another can become liabilities. Instead, each site, brief and regulatory environment demands fresh attention.

3. Complexity is rarely where you expect it

From the outside, the project’s most striking feature – its 20-tonne suspended glass pool – appears to be its greatest technical challenge. In reality, though, the structural engineering involved wasn’t Tozzi’s biggest headache.

“The real difficulty,” he explains, “was ensuring the pool didn’t leak.” No manufacturer would guarantee the long-term performance of the seals. His solution required experimentation, testing and a degree of risk tolerance that few clients – or architects – are comfortable with. Luckily though, this perseverance paid off: “Today, five years after I conducted the first test, the pool is perfectly watertight.”

Elsewhere, complexity emerged in less visible ways: persuading authorities to understand and approve the unconventional design, or demonstrating how light would move throughout the building.

4. The closer you get to the build, the better the outcome

“The mentor I’m most fond of, the late Adolfo Natalini, often called me an ‘architect-builder’ – half-architect, half-builder,” says Tozzi. In other words, he’s a practitioner equally comfortable drawing details and resolving them on site.

His proximity to the construction itself proved invaluable. Working closely with craftspeople, and in some cases directly executing elements of the build, accelerated problem-solving and deepened his understanding of the project. “Design is of course different from building, but this experience has brought me much closer to the discipline of construction,” he says.

For private clients, this translates into a broader principle: the more integrated the relationship between design and build, the stronger the result. Finding an advisor who can work across both is key to success.

Whether through closer collaboration with contractors or selecting teams that bridge both disciplines, the distance between concept and construction is often where quality is compromised.

5. The most important driver is still the idea

Despite technical challenges and regulatory hurdles, Tozzi returns to a simpler point: every project is ultimately led by its underlying idea. “Each project has its own story and its own inspiration,” he says. “The technical answers follow.”

For those embarking on their own property transformations – often navigating a sea of possibilities, references and inputs – this is perhaps the most valuable lesson of all. Without a clear, compelling vision, complexity becomes noise. With it, even the most intricate project gains coherence.

Seven years on, Tozzi describes the experience as demanding, unpredictable and yet deeply rewarding. He’s not certain he would repeat it. But he wouldn’t change it either.

And this may be the final, unspoken lesson of the tale: that the most ambitious homes are rarely the easiest to deliver, but they often age with the most integrity.

This property is available through Savills.

This story also appears in the new Portfolio magazine. Request your complimentary copy here.