The list of challenges to renovating a beloved and historic 1813 family villa on Lake Como was considerable. There was the steep, rocky site, which meant a tower crane was required to move in all furniture and art. There was a compressed timeline: work started in January and had to be finished in time for summer.
There was the fact that the owners, Frida Polli and her brother Niccolo, lived far away, in New York City and London respectively. And, of course, the Pollis had to navigate their own family dynamics — close, but not without complexities. But the biggest hurdle of all, it turns out, was agreeing to hire a New York design firm, Studio DB, that had never before worked in Europe, to oversee the project.
Bringing in Damian and Britt Zunino — the D and B in Studio DB — was Frida’s idea. They had designed her West Village apartment in 2017, and when she and her brother decided to breathe new life into the lakeside property, which had been in their family for 75 years, Frida immediately suggested her onetime collaborators. ‘It wasn’t easy to convince my brother that an American-based design firm should do this,’ Frida says with a smile.
It’s perhaps not surprising that the Zuninos are adept at managing family dynamics. They are spouses (and parents to four children) as well as design partners, and they have learned to see disagreement and negotiation as assets rather than a hindrance. Damian is trained as an architect, and Britt has a background in fashion and retail as well as interior design, though they don’t see their roles as siloed.
‘We feel like the strength of our work is that we’re figuring out how all those things work together from the very beginning,’ Damian says. ‘We never do a floorplan without doing a furniture plan. As soon as we start looking at materials, we’re looking at fabrics. We’re creating the feel of a place together.’
Known for sourcing original pieces from artisans and deftly mixing vintage and contemporary elements, Studio DB has taken on residential projects on the East Coast and in California, as well as masterminding designer Lela Rose’s Dallas flagship boutique.
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For the Como project, the Zuninos began by studying the history of the house. In the 19th century it was home to a locally famous sculptor, Giuseppe Croff, whose terracotta decorations still adorn the outside of the villa. The Pollis’ grandfather Aleardo, an entrepreneur and daredevil who liked to race speedboats on Lake Como, bought the property in 1950.
The siblings grew up visiting in the summers and the villa eventually passed to their father Rolando. He added a pool and a guesthouse. When they inherited the property in 2021, both Frida, a neuroscientist turned AI investor, and Niccolo, a banker, knew they wanted to carry on the tradition of family holidays at their clifftop home.
Studio DB’s plan called for stripping away earlier interventions: porcelain floors and an oversized modern fireplace that dominated the living room and would have been better suited to a groovy Gstaad chalet. They removed yellow-tinged oak panelling and replaced a 1980s stainless steel staircase with a stately one that feels original to the house.
Besides widening the upstairs entrance, where the main bedrooms are, they made few changes to the layout of the rooms. Even an early plan to move and expand the kitchen, the layout of which was rendered awkward by four separate entrances, was scrapped.
‘In a winter house the kitchen is where everyone hangs out. But this is really a summer house, and everyone’s by the pool and in the main area, where you see all the views,’ Frida says. So instead the existing kitchen got a glamorous upgrade with an oval island to allow for easier traffic flow. (It doesn’t hurt that there’s a new outdoor kitchen overlooking the lake, complete with a pizza oven.)
Early on, Studio DB discovered the extent of the family’s eclectic collection of art and antiques, which is cataloged and maintained by a dedicated archivist. Before work began on the villa, the team made several long trips to Lake Como as well as to the Polli family home in Milan, where Britt discovered rugs, 17th-century paintings, and 19th-century furniture. ‘I was inspired everywhere I turned,’ she says.
Though both Frida’s and Niccolo’s instincts ran more contemporary, Studio DB knew they had to weave in the treasure trove of heirlooms. ‘Part of the process was convincing them that we should include more antiques,’ Damian says. Throughout the house, mid-century lighting now mingles with centuries-old tapestries, paintings, and furniture, carefully chosen so as not to distract from the setting. ‘You don’t want anything to take away from all of those incredible views,’ Britt says.
As for the potential problems of working across an ocean, in a country not famed for efficiency? The Zuninos discovered that most of the warnings they received were overblown. ‘We would tell people, “We’re doing a project in Italy,’ and they’d say, “Oh, I’m so sorry, that is going to take you so long,”’ Britt says. ‘And I would answer, “Actually, it’s taking less time than it does to renovate a bathroom in New York City.”’
