There is a common assumption that transforming a home means changing its architecture. But when interior designer and architect Natalia Miyar first encountered this family home in Coral Gables, Florida, the bones were precisely what she wanted to keep.
The setting was familiar territory for Natalia, whose eponymous atelier has offices in London and Coral Gables. She has lived in Miami for more than 40 years and completed her master’s in architecture there, spending her student years studying and drawing historic houses like this one.
Set within Coral Gables’ French City Village, the house had already undergone several renovations, but its proportions and architecture remained beautifully intact. ‘My role wasn’t to redesign the architecture, but to reveal it,’ Natalia explains. ‘I wanted to bring warmth back into the house through color, texture, craftsmanship, art and carefully chosen objects.’
That familiarity with Coral Gables became fundamental to the redesign. Rather than applying a generalized idea of Floridian style, Natalia looked to the colors, textures, and materials she had known for decades, allowing the house and its surroundings to inform everything from grasscloth and raffia to saturated blues, leafy greens, and earthy terracotta…