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Issue link: https://digital.miamilivingmagazine.com/i/1547432
luxury is evolving. It’s becoming less about excess and more about quality of life, personal experience and the emotional connection we develop with the spaces we inhabit. People don’t simply buy square footage; they are looking for a feeling, an experience and a place that reflects who they are. For me, great residential design begins with the fundamentals: proportion, natural light, comfort and a thoughtful relationship with the surrounding environment. But it’s also about what I like to think of as the choreography of everyday life: the experience of arriving home, the way spaces unfold, the transition between indoors and outdoors, or how a shared amenity becomes a natural extension of one’s home. Projects such as Andare Residences and Collection Sei offer different expressions of this philosophy, bringing architecture, interiors, technology and lifestyle together into a coherent experience. At Pininfarina, we approach this through three principles: Beauty, Technology and Impact. Beauty creates an emotional connection, technology helps improve performance and comfort, and impact ensures that what we design creates enduring value. True luxury, ultimately, is about how a place makes you feel and how effortlessly it supports your life. ML: How should luxury developments contribute to the neighborhoods and communities around them? Eugenia Di Girolamo: I believe every building has a responsibility to the city, regardless of its price point or who occupies it. A luxury development may be privately owned, but it is also part of a shared urban environment. The way it meets the street, contributes to the public realm, responds to its surroundings and supports the neighborhood can have an impact far beyond its residents. Having worked in urban planning, I’m particularly interested in what happens at the ground level of a building. Does it create an inviting pedestrian experience? Does it contribute to the character of the street? Does it respond to the climate and landscape? Does it add something meaningful to the life of the neighborhood? Luxury and civic responsibility should not be seen as competing ideas. In fact, I think the most successful developments are those that create exceptional private experiences while also contributing positively to the places around them. Architecture has the capacity to create both individual value and collective value. We should aspire to do both. ML: How do you preserve Pininfarina’s Italian design identity while reflecting the character of places as diverse as South Florida, Brazil’s Coral Coast, and Belém? Eugenia Di Girolamo: I don’t see our Italian identity and the local character of a place as opposing forces. They are complementary. Pininfarina’s Italian heritage isn’t about reproducing a particular architectural style. It’s rooted in a design philosophy: elegance, proportion, innovation, precision and an appreciation for beauty that transcends passing trends.