tra believes that architecture can transform, both our environment and our behavior

TRA studio is the New York and Venice based firm led by Caterina Roiatti, AIA, and Robert Traboscia. TRA explores transdisciplinarity, finding the equilibrium between art and design, cultural and practical constraints, uncovering opportunities for innovative but programmatic interventions. We strive to achieve surprisingly simple and meaningful built design our solutions that enhance the client’s values, promotes the user’s self esteem and strives to solve society’s collective challenges; we call it “design with integrity’.

The Studio’s experimental attitude searches for the balance between the operational and conceptual space, developing environments that are unforgettable yet performative, remaining always, site-specific, responsive to the current conditions and cost effective. Our open-minded, but rigorous, design process has been shaped by working in New York, where is no coincidence that most of our work is located.

We know how to build: we see the execution as part of the design, as proven by the longevity and resale value of our spaces. Our work always strives to transcends expectations.

Our diverse body of work spans a wide range of projects, including new construction, modular challenging buildings, additions, adaptive re-use, contemporary restorations, commercial and residential interiors. Since 1995, the firm has worked with leading cultural Institutions, art foundations, global corporations, international fashion labels, nonprofit organizations as well as developers and private clients.  

TRA embraces the responsibility that comes with working in the Historic Districts, where the interventions will likely last and have a reaching effect on the city and its users; from interiors to new buildings the sum of the singular interventions, rises at the urban scale as part of the larger fabric, becoming neighborhood enhancing.  The studio’s work in Landmarked areas, has defined our own brand of contextualism, where content and context inform each other and the contradictions between old and new are the generator of creative processes.

TRA received the Regina Kellerman Award from the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation,was selected as a top finalist in the Grand Army Plaza Competition in 2008, was one of the ten finalists of the AIA NY Interiors Committee best Community OInteriors in 2017 and was named one of the best Design-Build Firms by NY Architects in 2018. TRA’s projects have been featured in several publications including the, New York Times, Architectural Record, the AIA Guide to New York City, 101 Cool Buildings: the best of New York City Architecture, Masterpieces: Roof Architecture + Design, the Real Deal, New American Luxury and Design Bureau Magazine.