Meet 6 Up-and-Coming Interior Design Studios Making their Mark

For Cannes, France, duo Kevin Caprini and Jerry Pellerin, design is as much about atmosphere as it is about form. Friends since high school, they founded their namesake practice by uniting Caprini’s architectural training and Pellerin’s stints at his parents’ design firm, conceiving resplendent interiors that skillfully temper the French Riviera’s languid sensuality with disciplined compositions and timeless materials.

The 50-person atelier oversees everything from concept through construction, channeling
exquisite craftsmanship and technical finesse to achieve what they call “modern epicurean
living,” an ethos that encourages delighting in life’s sensory pleasures. Those ideas reverberate through their portfolio, especially the transformation of the legendary Palm Beach complex in Cannes, reviving the 1929 seaside landmark with restaurants, galleries, and a casino, which cast the Côte d’Azur’s golden-age glamour through a fresh lens.

Victoria Sass has never questioned her path. “Design was an early and inevitable calling,” says the founder of Prospect Refuge Studio, the Minneapolis firm she established after studying architecture in Copenhagen and cutting her teeth on commercial interiors. Traveling internationally afforded her “clarity on what the Midwestern voice is”—and has compelled her to articulate it through cozy, craft-forward homes across the Twin Cities. Each is awash in a charming brew of intimate nooks, character-rich furnishings, and hand-forged pieces by regional artisans that evoke distinctly Midwestern ideals of warmth and humility. “We try to put as many human-made things as we can in our projects,” explains Sass, who collaborated on a lighting collection with local studio Hennepin Made and created a room based on her childhood home for the 2024 Kips Bay Decorator Show House Dallas.

Homan Rajai and Elena Dendiberia forged Bay Area firm Studio Ahead from a shared belief that interiors can serve as a means for cultural identity and artisanship to converge. Rajai, who trained in landscape architecture at the University of California at Davis, absorbed lessons in sustainability and equity before apprenticing for a designer and antiques dealer who introduced him to handicraft and provenance. Dendiberia, who grew up in Samara, Russia, among austere Soviet housing blocks, studied at the San Francisco Art Institute.

Together, they found their creative compass through Northern California’s craft lineage, beginning with visits to woodworker Ido Yoshimoto’s studio and J. B. Blunk’s storied Inverness estate. Their network grew considerably and now encompasses a dynamic conglomerate of regional makers. “It’s important to bring these artists and artisans to the forefront,” Rajai says. “It supports a move away from homogeneity.”

After dabbling in set design and fashion styling, Hollie Bowden realized that interiors—and sourcing the antiques and oddities that shape their spirit—proved the most creatively fulfilling for her. “Designing homes gives me so much satisfaction,” says the London-based Bowden, whose growing practice took a global turn after she landed an unexpected commission in Ibiza, Spain.

In the decade since, she has built a nimble eight-person studio known for devising witty residences imbued with a sensitivity for the past and an eye toward the future, buoyed by collectible one-offs, artisan treasures, and works from lesser-known artists discovered on her travels. “I like to think everything we put out has an angle that feels quite fresh,” explains Bowden, who also channels her collecting sensibilities into The Gallery, her antiques shop in London’s hip Shoreditch neighborhood where newly acquired pieces often sell before even reaching the floor.

Partners in life and work, Noam Dvir and Daniel Rauchwerger launched BOND (Bureau of Noam and Daniel) after meeting serendipitously in Jerusalem and attending Harvard together. Dvir entered the field by way of journalism, covering Tel Aviv’s architectural renaissance for daily newspaper Haaretz before deciding he wanted to practice rather than report. Trained as an architect, Rauchwerger shared his partner’s fascination with storytelling as a tool for shaping the built environment. Together, they honed their craft at OMA before opening their own New York office five years ago. “Journalism is very similar to architecture,” Dvir says. “It’s all about crafting an idea and a narrative for the project.”

That approach drives the couple’s portfolio, which includes a multitude of residences on New York’s Fire Island, such as a collector’s midcentury house whose understated architecture is invigorated by a vibrant Doron Langberg mural. “We have a predominantly queer clientele, and they want space to reflect a different lifestyle,” Dvir says. That has afforded the partners an entrée into high-profile nightlife commissions, such as the forthcoming Queer Nightlife Community Center, a warehouse venue in Brooklyn designed in collaboration with architect Charles Renfro.

For Susannah Stopford and Alejandra Murillo, design began at a very early age. “I never got over playing house,” recalls Murillo, who endlessly redecorated her bedroom during her childhood in Colombia. Stopford, who studied at Rhode Island School of Design and cites artist Louise Nevelson as an enduring influence, remembers sketching houses while her sculptor mother introduced her to making and materiality. After years of practicing together in New York, the duo established NoNo Studio, now based in Los Angeles and Mexico City, where they embrace what they call “rigorous play”—a process-led approach that balances levity with thoughtfulness in the pursuit of spirited, soulful interiors.

That ethos shaped their breakout project, in the Mount Washington neighborhood of Los Angeles, where they transformed a 1930s hunting cabin into a warm, convivial refuge for Stopford’s family. They’ve since taken on a live-work residence for a sculptor in the Hudson Valley in New York, a gallery in Nairobi, and a small schoolhouse in Colombia.