homes Designed for living, not just looking.
2018
estd
portico
About
about portico
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our values
team bios
Meet the founder
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Every project begins with the same question: what does this home want to be, and who will be living in it? Based in Boston, the studio works across residential interiors, from full-scope new builds alongside trusted architects to the careful renovation of homes worth preserving. The studio takes on a considered number of projects each year, allowing each space the time and attention it needs to settle into itself.
Claire founded Portico after years of watching good homes get designed from the outside in, beautiful on paper, but somehow empty in person. The work that stayed with her was always the opposite: rooms that seemed to have arrived at themselves slowly, full of decisions that couldn’t quite be explained but couldn’t be undone. Portico was created to pursue that quality deliberately, not as a style, but as a standard.
Claire McCutcheon
meet our founder
Lucia joined Portico with a natural sensitivity to materials, the kind that can’t be taught, only refined. Her work begins at the level most people overlook: how a surface feels under hand, how light shifts across it, how one decision quietly affects another.
Working closely with Claire, she supports the development of each project from the inside out, sourcing, studying, and refining the details that give a home its depth. Lucia is drawn to the quieter aspects of design. It’s often her work that allows a space to settle into itself.
ASSISTANT DESIGNER
Lucia hsu
Elena brings a quiet, intuitive approach to her work, shaped by a deep appreciation for atmosphere and material. With a background in residential design and a natural eye for balance, she is often drawn to the details that give a space its character.
At Portico, Elena supports the development of each project from early concept through to installation, with a particular focus on sourcing and refinement. Her work reflects a belief that a home should reveal itself gradually, shaped by intention rather than excess.
ASSISTANT DESIGNER
Elena Pham
We build in room to grow. The best spaces reveal themselves over time, as life adds its own layers to ours.
04. A home is never really finished
We source slowly and deliberately. Vintage pieces, honest textiles, stone that has genuinely aged. Nothing decorative for its own sake.
03. Materials that earn their place
We don’t restore or modernise, we blend. Every project holds both, and the tension between them is where the interest lives.
02. Old and new in honest conversation
We design for the long view. The homes we love most are the ones that were never trying to be fashionable.
01. Character before trend
