Patricia Urquiola took on a genuinely difficult brief when she designed Il Sereno: how to insert a new-build contemporary hotel directly onto the waterfront at Torno, a village on the eastern arm of Lake Como, without either mimicking the nineteenth-century grandeur that defines the lake's hotel tradition or simply ignoring it. Her answer was a building clad in vertical cedar fins that soften and warm an otherwise clean-lined concrete and glass structure — five floors of deep-balconied rooms stepping toward the water, the teak deck of the infinity pool extending the building's horizontal plane directly over the lake. The 30 suites carry Urquiola's furniture vocabulary throughout: teal swivel lounge chairs, woven outdoor pieces from her Kettal collections, sculptural trestle desks in dark-stained timber, and headboard panels set in walnut frames that reference traditional Lombard joinery without reproducing it. Floor-to-ceiling glazing frames the green mountains of the Triangolo Lariano opposite, while sheer linen curtains filter the light into something close to underwater. The restaurant, Il Ristorante, is anchored in an older structure entirely — rough-hewn stone arches and dark masonry walls from what appears to be a historic lakeside outbuilding, now fitted with polished granite-topped tables and upholstered dining chairs, the kitchen visible through a slot window cut in the original stonework. The tension between those two registers, ancient local material and considered contemporary furniture, runs through the whole property.

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