Lately, I’ve been hearing many sales experts talking about trust and the importance of this value in increasing the number of acquisitions of the product or service you offer. When I reached out to Pablo to write the piece about Casa Josephine‘s lodging in Río Frío, it was precisely trust that he conveyed to me in his brief voice message.
That tone of familiarity used by Pablo—which he shares with Iñigo, is undoubtedly one of the keys to Casa Josephine’s success. They have trusted themselves to follow their own rules, resist being influenced by the crowd, and, despite the fear of rejection, remain true to themselves. That character is what breathes life into each of their projects. It’s a down-to-earth familiarity, far removed from pretension, that captivated many nearly two decades ago with their work at the lodging in Sorzano, La Rioja.
After a long career and numerous projects, they’ve taken a further step with their house in La Losa, Segovia. This village of 500 inhabitants is located in the protected landscape of oak and juniper groves in the Sierra de Guadarrama, just an hour from Madrid and fifteen minutes from Segovia. The area has a rich equestrian and livestock tradition and offers eco-friendly meat producers, grocery stores, a pharmacy, and a bakery.
The new space, born in 2022, is a retreat where visitors can breathe, relax, and connect with nature. “Río Frío is a small village house, but completely different because we’ve done a complete renovation, including its architecture, making it much cleaner, more minimal, with custom-made furniture. It’s a total project.”
Spread across two floors, Río Frío features a living room, dining area, kitchen, and a small garden patio with a plunge pool. It’s a space where Iñigo and Pablo continue to play — a new game board that can almost be felt in the various nods to a black-and-white checkerboard pattern in its interior. “I think our projects are quite different between them.
There’s a throughline in Iñigo’s artistic direction, which becomes more apparent with each project, but we’ve never aimed to replicate an idea from one to another. We don’t go to a client and say, ‘I want everything in pink.’ Everything is a debate, every element is a decision,” Pablo explains. Although the evolution of Casa Josephine as a studio is evident, Pablo and Iñigo have never stopped infusing their work with the same playful spirit they’ve had from day one.
