Susanna Cots: interiority as architecture

Some trajectories are built through projects; others through a gaze. Susanna Cots belongs to the latter. From her first studio in l’Empordà in 2001 to her international expansion — with a second office in Hong Kong in 2014 — her work has evolved as a continuous exploration of emotional wellbeing. As a tangible experience: light, silence, memory, and perception.

Few interior designers in Spain have developed a language as recognisable and coherent as Susanna’s. Her work has been acknowledged both nationally and internationally for its aesthetic and conceptual sensitivity. In 2026, Susanna celebrates the 25th anniversary of her studio, and at Exágono Magazine we celebrate it with this monograph dedicated to her, her practice, and some of her most iconic projects.

See all the projects included in the monograph

For several months, Susanna shared with us weekly texts she called Kando, a Japanese word that defines “the profound satisfaction and emotion felt when encountering something of exceptional value.” These texts condense her inner universe. An intimate series in which the designer steps away from professional discourse to explore what sustains her practice: lived life.

We have allowed ourselves to return to those texts and read them again. This is a journey through the ideas that nourish her way of understanding spaces — and our way of inhabiting them.

Everyday life

The deepest architecture is not built with matter but with gestures. Susanna Cots places the origin of her sensitivity in what remains unseen: the invisible rituals that sustain daily life. The crumpled blanket, coffee in silence, the pause before the day begins. Small choreographies that build identity. “This is where beauty hides, in what seems insignificant but accompanies you every morning, shaping and giving intention to the day ahead. That is the feeling I seek to experience every day: in my family, in my work, in my designs. Because it is authentic,” she tells us.

In her gaze, the home is above all an intimate refuge, and everyday life becomes a root. “Let us be grateful to be part of that imperfection that makes us more authentic, more ourselves, more profound. We are what we live in every instant.”

Light

If there is a common thread in Susanna Cots’ work, it is light as an emotional language. A living material that accompanies the rhythm of the body, that activates, calms, or gathers. Light as the choreography of the day. “Your body responds almost automatically, as if the sun held the key that activates your entire system,” she writes.

From the clarity of dawn to the domestic dimness of night, the designer describes a dance of illuminations that shape moods. Cold light that drives action. Warm light that gathers. Indirect light that suspends time. “I have learned to domesticate light, to shape it so it can dialogue with space and emotions.” In her creative universe, light accompanies us continuously, though in ever-changing forms.

Essence

Speaking of essence without falling into rhetoric is one of Susanna’s enduring obsessions. In contrast to the contemporary trivialisation of the word, she returns it to its original territory: the unrepeatable, the non-replicable, what cannot become a trend. “Essence will never be a trend,” she says.

“The essence of a space is its deep breath. It is the silent echo of those who inhabit it. The harmony between outside and inside, between what has been lived and what is yet to come. It is not only what we see, but what we feel when we are there: a heartbeat that welcomes and accompanies, that holds our memories and allows us to simply be, in the stillness of the everyday.”

Susanna speaks of essence as a great inner search. “When I think about essence, I imagine a space that speaks of you without saying your name.” In her approach, essence is built over time: memories, rituals, belonging, safety, connection with the natural and the vital. A slow architecture that seeks permanence rather than impact.

The architecture of scent

There are invisible dimensions that define spaces. Smell is one of them. Susanna approaches it as an architectural discipline: layers, depth, memory. Like a perfume unfolding in notes. “A scent is like a book, like a space, like a soul.”

Top notes as threshold. Heart notes as embrace. Base notes as persistent memory. Scent understood as an emotional structure that builds identity. “I have always believed that smell is one of the pillars of spatial design — invisible yet decisive, capable of transforming a room into a refuge or into a memory.” Designing spaces is also designing memories.

Perception

Perception appears as an intimate compass. Rather than measuring, it orients. For Susanna, spaces are not understood — they are felt. And that perception changes over time, because we change. “Homes are not monuments; they are living beings that grow, adapt, and evolve with us.”

Perception as pause, as interruption of noise, as an instant of awareness. “Stopping to enjoy, to understand, and to understand yourself.” Space thus becomes a temporal mirror: it reflects who we were, who we are, and who we are becoming.

Change

If perception opens the gaze, change displaces it. In Susanna Cots’ thinking, change is continuity. A natural flow comparable to the cycles of nature. “Like a landscape that evolves with the seasons, the home should reflect our vital flow.”

Homes as open diaries, where every transformation adds layers of meaning. Nothing definitive, everything alive. “Homes are not made to be forever.” Accepting impermanence as a form of freedom.

The invisible

At the end of the journey appears the concept closest to her professional practice: the invisible. That which is not shown but sustains the experience — light, silence, noble materials, atmospheres. Elements that do not need explanation; they are perceived. “Making the complex simple, making it unnoticeable,” Susanna says.

Design as a silent act, as structured intuition, as emotional geometry. “A design that works with invisible elements in favour of your wellbeing.” Here the essence of her interior architecture is revealed: an aesthetic that seeks connection beyond protagonism.

Evolution

The cycle closes with an inevitable word: evolution, as acquired awareness. A journey from sensitivity towards clarity. “Evolution is the journey from hypersensitivity to consciousness.”

Light reappears as both origin and destination — a language that structures her trajectory and runs through her projects. “Because light does not only illuminate: it transforms.” Evolution understood as refinement rather than accumulation.

Susanna Cots’ work is built from the inside out

Susanna Cots proposes an attitude: listening before designing, feeling before building, removing before adding. Her work — and projects such as The Eleven House — emerges from that conviction: that space can be refuge, awareness, and memory at once. At a time when architecture tends toward noise, her trajectory insists on the opposite: lowering the volume to hear the essential again. Her work proposes a way of being in the world — and also a way of inhabiting it.

Susanna Cots

Few interior designers in Spain have developed such a distinctive and coherent language as Susanna Cots. Her work—shaped by a deep connection to nature and emotional wellbeing—unfolds from her studio in the serene landscape of the Empordà region, infusing each project with a sense of clarity, balance and quiet beauty. Her approach has garnered recognition both nationally and internationally for its aesthetic sensitivity and conceptual depth.

Cots’ trajectory is defined by a pursuit of equilibrium. A balance between light and shadow, fullness and emptiness, geometry and emotion. Her spaces are invitations to stillness and introspection, where daily life becomes a meditative experience. Natural light, noble materials and organic forms weave a narrative centered on wellbeing, honesty and essential beauty.

Her vision goes beyond decoration: it is a way of inhabiting. Each project is an invitation to reconnect with what matters, to strip away the unnecessary, and to embrace the harmony of simplicity. From private homes to boutique hotels and commercial spaces, Susanna Cots has cultivated a timeless aesthetic—one that speaks directly to the soul.

Behind the calm that defines her interiors lies rigorous work, a deep attention to detail, and a finely tuned intuition that reads each space with empathy. Because for Susanna Cots, to design is, above all, an act of care.

Project by Susanna Cots