Most villa design either retreats from the landscape — closed walls, heavy curtains, an interior that performs as if it were transplanted from Mayfair — or surrenders to it entirely, becoming a coastal cliché of linen, pale wood and beige stone.

SEA works in the territory between. A home that opens to its place but holds its own character. Italian school as the foundation — proportions, materials, the discipline of restraint. The freedom of open water and open air as the second layer — light that floods in, lines that follow the horizon, materials that age with the sun and the salt. The character of the client running through both — because a home with space around it is where personality has the most room to breathe.

A modernist villa on Lake Como with art at the centre of every elevation. A coastal residence on the Costa Brava that holds the rhythm of the water in its layout. A country home in the Cotswolds where the garden is the first room, and the kitchen — the second. None of them retreating from the place. None of them dissolving into it.