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HOUSE TOUR | ROOMS & GARDENS | WORLD OF CABANA
Maria Speake, founder of leading UK-based design studio, Retrouvius, shares images from, and insights into, an outstanding farmhouse project in Umbria – an extract from her new book, Retrouvius: Contemporary Salvage, Designing Homes from a Philosophy of Reuse.
BY MARIA SPEAKE | ROOMS & GARDENS | 26 NOVEMBER 2025
Red velvet curtains help enrich the winter dining room. Image from Retrouvius: Contemporary Salvage, Designing Homes from a Philosophy of Reuse; Rizzoli.
People want their home to be a safe haven where they feel they intrinsically belong. When they engage with a designer, they fear their sanctuary might turn into a show house, and they might become a walk-on part on a stage set. Long chats are important to dispel those real fears. And what clients don’t say is just as important as what they do say.
With these clients I restored a ruin in Umbria, part of which dated to the 16th century. We walked the site together to stimulate ideas, imagining the use of the space and how different rooms felt at different times of day. Even discussing positioning of plugs and wall switches, which can seem mind-numbingly dull, makes a huge difference to how people will be able to interact with and move through a space.
Pictured: The Kitchen with cabinets built from old sea-defense timber; the grand entrance to the 19th-century extension restored with reclaimed traditional terracotta pianelle tiles; a yellow-toned bedroom with a rustic brick stove reimagined as an eccentric bedside table; an en suite bathroom with a charming metal washstand. All images from Retrouvius: Contemporary Salvage, Designing Homes from a Philosophy of Reuse; Rizzoli.
Creating a new home can be an emotional process. I looked for ways to hear their reactions and opinions to shifting a kitchen, working with fire-blackened timber, and appreciating the scarred walls that had so many stories.
Disagreements don’t need to be unpleasant. They can be a stimulus for conversation to go in fanciful and even radical directions.
Charred beams and dark oak furniture give this attic bedroom a moody feel. A moldovan bitter-chocolate rug with bruised pinks helped suggest the other textiles in the room. All images from Retrouvius: Contemporary Salvage, Designing Homes from a Philosophy of Reuse; Rizzoli.
Lots of decisions seemed to sort themselves out on these visits. For example, it was soon clear that they would be drawn to certain parts of the house in the summer while other parts would be more of a warm cocoon during the colder months.
Deciding a color palette can drive people wild, but by the time we got to that stage, I knew whether a silence meant happy agreement or discomfort.
Pictured: Bedrooms, the first featuring a free-standing bath and the second, a crewelwork headboard. Bathrooms featuring Moroccan zellige tiles. All images from Retrouvius: Contemporary Salvage, Designing Homes from a Philosophy of Reuse; Rizzoli.
As we explored, we found the palette that worked for individual rooms and knitted the parts to the whole. However, even in pinning things down there was flexibility.
Light reflecting on the beautiful soft pinkish gray of the new lime plaster made us all spontaneously agree to ditch the planned paint scheme and leave some of the walls unpainted. It can take hours and hours of decision-making, and then there’s that moment when it all falls into place. It’s a bit like alchemy.
A winter sitting room that captures the best of the long, low light. Image from Retrouvius: Contemporary Salvage, Designing Homes from a Philosophy of Reuse; Rizzoli.
This article is an adapted extract from Retrouvius: Contemporary Salvage, Designing Homes from a Philosophy of Reuse, published by Rizzoli.
Available at the Cabana Bookshop.
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Cabana Magazine N24
Covers by Morris & Co.
This issue will transport you across countries and continents where craft and culture converge. Evocative travel portfolios reveal Japan's elegant restraint, Peru's sacred churches ablaze with color, and striking architecture in a fading Addis Ababa. Inspiring minds from the late Giorgio Armani to Nikolai von Bismarck spark curiosity, while exclusive homes—from the dazzling Burghley House in England and an Anglo-Italian dream in Milan, to a Dionysian retreat in Patmos and a historic Pennsylvania farmhouse—become portals that recall, evoke and transport.
