La Pensione boutique hotel

Studio Castillero spent another afternoon shooting S.K.I.N. Design Studio's recently unveiled model room for La Pensione boutique hotel in San Diego's Little Italy district. Photographs will be published in January 2010, and the complete hotel redesign is slated for completion in spring. We will keep you posted with the latest details!

Unveiling La Pensione's Model Room

S.K.I.N. Design Studio has just unveiled the model room for the complete redesign of La Pensione boutique hotel in downtown San Diego's Little Italy district.

S.K.I.N. has transformed the interiors, infusing a contemporary urban aesthetic while paying homage to the community's Italian heritage.

Principal designer Deniece Duscheone has developed a concept of affordable luxury, indulging in Frette linens and Carrera marble while designing customized furniture pieces to optimize space and budget. For the color palette, Duscheone drew inspiration from Italian masters of past and present, using shades of persimmon and ochre against a backdrop of bright white with rich grey tones.

The redesign of La Pensione’s guest rooms, including 6 newly created suites featuring private balconies, is scheduled for completion in spring 2010. View additional photographs and keep in touch at http://www.skindesignstudio.com/ for updates regarding the hotel's relaunch!

Photography by Studio Castillero

Inspiration from the Italian Masters

We feel that boundaries are often blurred when it comes to interior design and art. In creating an interiors concept for the redesign of La Pensione, a boutique hotel in San Diego’s historic Little Italy district, S.K.I.N. looked to the masters of Italian painting and sculpture.

We approach an interior space with a desire to first create a strong and lasting foundation, reminiscent of the background palette of a painting or the dramatic form of a chiseled sculpture. For La Pensione we selected shades of grey and white for the walls and floors of the rooms. These tones, along with textural elements such as crown molding, mimic the play of light and shadow on the surfaces of a Bernini sculpture.

This simple yet elegant beginning allows for an essential element of any design project: versatility. We incorporated accent colors – in this case bright golden shades of ochre –into textiles and custom designed furnishings. The objective of the color palette is to both capture the imagination yet remain flexible. Additional colors may be introduced in future yet the foundation colors and texture remain timeless, allowing the spaces to effortlessly evolve as the surroundings and context inevitably change.

As artists, designers, and architects we contribute our creations to a long history of works by those who came before us. We seek to inspire and foster connectedness by drawing on the past to inform our future.