Architects Tremezzina
Architectsin Tremezzina.
Including two who work regularly on protected buildings.
Lake Como Province of Como
The trades that matter most on this shore are the garden trades, and they are unusually good here for the obvious reason: this coast has employed gardeners continuously for two centuries, and the people who look after the great gardens also look after the small ones. Anyone buying a house with mature planting should budget for that properly and engage someone before the first spring rather than after it.
Building work is a different matter. A high proportion of the villa stock is listed or sits within landscape constraint, the Regina road complicates deliveries and scaffolding along the whole frontage, and works touching the shoreline bring in a further set of consents. Specialist restoration professionals will usually come from Como. The practical advice is to have the constraint position on a specific building established before exchange, because it determines the programme far more than the condition of the building does.
For how this trade works across the whole lake, what to ask for, how the firms are chosen and what goes wrong, read architects on Lake Como. For the village itself, read our guide to Tremezzina.
Editorial note: we have not yet written up how this trade works in Tremezzina specifically, so this page is kept out of search until we have. The introduction itself is unaffected. Ask and we will make it.
On the network
6 practices
Held across the lake rather than in one village. We introduce the two we would use ourselves for the job in front of you.
01What they do
Feasibility before you buy
A site visit and a read of the building's planning history, answering what can be changed, what will need heritage consent, and what is simply not going to happen.
Consents and the heritage file
Measured survey, photographic record and the application through the comune, together with the heritage office's opinion where the building or its setting is protected.
Drawings a local builder can price
Sequenced for the access that exists: where scaffold stands, how material arrives, what has to be finished before the family comes in July.
Supervision and the paperwork at the end
Running the works on site, recording variations, and closing out the certificates that make the house legally habitable and saleable.
Questions
Do I need an architect to renovate a villa on Lake Como?
For anything beyond like-for-like repair, yes. The consent process requires drawings and declarations from a qualified professional registered in Italy, and on protected buildings that is unavoidable.
Even internal work that does not touch the outside of the building can require notification, and on a listed house internal decorative schemes are frequently protected in their own right. The practical reason is simpler: an unconsented alteration surfaces at the next sale, when the notary requires the building's planning position to be declared and consistent.
How long does it take to get planning permission on Lake Como?
It varies by comune, by whether the heritage office is involved, and by the time of year, and we do not publish timescales because a figure would be wrong more often than right.
What we will say is that owners should plan on the consent running through a winter, that the summer is the slowest period to be waiting for a technical office, and that a scheme discussed informally with the authority before submission moves considerably faster than one submitted cold. Build the programme backwards from the season you want the house available, not forwards from today.
How do architects on Lake Como charge?
Usually a fee for the design and consent stages, and a separate fee for site supervision, either as a proportion of the works value or as agreed stage payments. We do not publish rates.
Ask what is included in the consent stage and what happens if the application is refused and has to be resubmitted, because that is where fee disputes start. Site supervision is a distinct legal appointment in Italy and carries responsibility, so it is normally priced and engaged separately from the design.
Written by The Como Private Desk
Elsewhere in Tremezzina
Architects in other villages
For people who work on the lake
Are you the bestat what you do here?
The list we introduce from is short and grows slowly: by working with somebody, seeing how a job goes, and only then adding them. If that is the standard you hold yourself to, tell us who you are. We read every one. We check work before we introduce anybody, and no money passes in either direction.
Put yourself forward