Chesa Studio/Practice
About
A senior practitioner writing to a future client.
I am writing this as the founder, plainly. Chesa Studio is an alpine real estate development and restoration practice. We are based between Samedan in the Engadin and Litchfield County in Connecticut, and we build and restore primary and secondary residences for private homeowners, family offices, and the developers and hoteliers who build to the same standard between New York, Connecticut, Italy, and the Alps. The work runs from a Salisbury Federal that needed forty years of bad interventions removed, to a new house outside New Canaan built so that on the first winter it reads as if it has been there since 1910. The phone is 917.502.9236 if you would rather speak than write.
Where I trained, and how the Engadin work led to Connecticut work
I grew up between the Engadin and Milan. The first buildings I learned to read were chasas in Guarda, Ardez, and Zuoz: thick lime-rendered walls, sgraffito at the lintels, larch shutters silvered to pewter, ceramic stoves at the heart of every room. I trained first under a Grison master plasterer in Samedan, then in Lombardy alongside a restoration office that worked across Lake Como and the Brianza, then ran site work on two private chasas in the Upper Engadin and a hotel restoration in St. Moritz. I moved part of the practice to Connecticut after a Greenwich client asked us to bring the same discipline we used on a Lombard farmhouse to a hillside above the Mianus River. That project, and the three that followed in Litchfield County, taught me that the Connecticut country house and the Engadin chasa want the same things: serious masonry, real plaster, a hearth that anchors the room, and joinery cut to last three generations. We have run the studio between Samedan and Connecticut ever since.
What we take, and what we do not
We take a small number of commissions a year, restoration and new build in roughly equal measure, in the $4M to $10M range. We work with developers shaping spec houses for the Greenwich and Westport market who want a real building rather than a finish package, with family offices managing a primary residence in Connecticut and a chasa in the Engadin under one standard of care, with architects who want a partner on materials, joinery, and the fixed scope, and with private homeowners who are about to commit eight figures of work and want to know exactly who will be on the trowel. We do not take cosmetic refresh work, we do not take projects where the owner is unwilling to open walls, and we do not take new construction where the builder will not commit to hand-troweled lime and real masonry. We say no often. It is the only way to protect the work we have already promised.
The studio team
Tom Engo, founder and project principal, runs every commission from brief through stewardship. Elena Caspari is our project lead in Connecticut, coordinating the New Canaan, Greenwich, and Litchfield County sites and managing client communication week to week. Andrin Lareida is our restoration coordinator in the Engadin, based in Samedan, on site three days a week between Zuoz, Guarda, and the Bregaglia. Sofia Maranta is our materials lead, responsible for stone, plaster, joinery samples, and the spec sheets that go to the workshops. Markus Riatsch is our site supervisor, ex-Ruch atelier, who walks each Connecticut and Engadin site every week the trades are active. The team stays small on purpose. The same five people see a project from first walk to the day the family moves in.
The working ateliers we run with on every project
We do not subcontract craft to whoever is cheapest. We run with the same workshops, project after project, because the finish belongs to their hands and not to ours. Our plasterer is Werkstatt Caprez in Flims, Graubunden, third generation, hand-troweled lime over lime ground, sgraffito and stucco lustro on the Engadin work. In Connecticut we run with Sean Halloran of Halloran Plaster in Torrington, who trained in Dublin and Florence, for limewash and hand-troweled lime ceilings and walls. Our blacksmith is Officina Rivadossi outside Brescia, hand-forged unlacquered bronze and wrought iron for hinges, latches, fireplace tools, and stair brackets; in Connecticut we work with a smith in the Berkshires for the same vocabulary on American jobs. Our carpenter is Falegnameria Solivo in Poschiavo, fumed oak, reclaimed chestnut beams, and boiserie cut to the room. In Connecticut, our joiner is Caleb Witherspoon of Witherspoon & Sons in Sharon, fourth generation, who handles the parquet de Versailles, the kitchen cabinetry, and the library paneling. Our stone yard is Cave di Henraux in Querceta for Calacatta and Bardiglio, and Litchfield Stone in Goshen for fieldstone laid in lime mortar. Our ceramic stove maker is Sommerhuber in Steyr, Austria, for kachelofen and bench stoves. These are the names that show up on every spec sheet we send.
Offices
Our Engadin office is in Samedan, a working studio with a sample wall, a stone library, and a fabric room. Our Connecticut office is in Litchfield, also working, also with the materials kept where we can hand them to a client. The phone for both offices is 917.502.9236. If you are calling from Europe, the Samedan office runs CET hours; if you are calling from New York or Connecticut, the Litchfield office runs Eastern hours. Either office reaches the same five people. We do not run an answering service.
How we work with a new client
First a phone call, twenty to thirty minutes, plain. If the project is a fit on both sides, we walk the building or the site together. We do not charge for the first walk. After that, if we are taking the commission, we write a short letter of engagement that names the scope, the workshops, the lead, and the calendar. We do not write decks. We write paragraphs and we send samples. The first deliverable is usually a sample board on the dining table: two limewash mixes, three stones, two oak finishes, one bronze pull, and a piece of Belgian linen. If the client wants to see the work before we begin, we arrange a day in Samedan or a day in Litchfield County. 917.502.9236 is the number for that.
Restoration + Stewardship
Two to four years from intake to occupancy on a Federal or a chasa. We pull paint stratigraphy, sample lime, repoint chimneys, and rebuild a kachelofen with Sommerhuber. The studio carries the maintenance retainer for ten years after handover. Marmorino lime, Hull Forest Products on oak and chestnut, P.E. Guerin on hardware.
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New Construction
A house built new in Salisbury or Greenwich that reads as inherited. Three to five years from first call to furnished rooms. Allan Greenberg, Gil Schafer, Robert A.M. Stern as the canon we measure against. Hearth and arrival drawn first. Lime walls, fumed oak floors, encaustic cement tile in the mudroom, a Sommerhuber kachelofen against the family-room wall.
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Process
Seven phases. Site reading and brief. Historical and regional reading. Material language with samples on site. Workshop selection by name. Interior sequence drawn before furniture. Construction coordination with weekly site meetings. Stewardship plan attached to a ten-year retainer. Each phase produces a deliverable the client and the contractor can hold.
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Sources and notes
Founder note
Written in first person by Tom Engo, founder. The studio does not use ghostwriters and does not publish copy the founder has not read.
Workshops
Workshop names listed on this page are the same names that appear on the project spec sheets. Werkstatt Caprez, Halloran Plaster, Officina Rivadossi, Falegnameria Solivo, Witherspoon & Sons, Cave di Henraux, Litchfield Stone, Sommerhuber.
Contact
Phone 917.502.9236 for both the Samedan and Litchfield offices. Email contact@chesa.studio for written briefs. The phone is the faster route.
Speak with the studio.
Send a brief or call the studio. We respond to every serious inquiry within two working days.