Lightness and intensity, held together: Elisa Ossino

Her studio's manifesto pairs two words that rarely share a sentence: lightness and intensity — opposites on paper, complementary in her rooms. Elisa Ossino, a Sicilian-born architect trained at the Milan Polytechnic, founded her studio in 2006 and works across residential and retail interiors, product design, art direction and set design, guiding a team of creatives from different fields. Geometric abstraction, monochromes and a thread of metaphysical references keep space, light and objects in one coherent conversation. AD listed her among its Top 100 interior designers in 2019 and 2020.

Two houses in the La Mercanti portfolio declare her in their designer rosters: Dieffebi, the steel storage specialist, and Fantini, the tap maker from Lake Orta. When your project needs that balance of light and intense, we know exactly whose shelves to point at.