Moss Design
About Moss Design
Founded in 2008, Moss is a full service architecture and design studio. Our work is diverse by design and allows us to explore the best solutions for varied projects including residential, commercial, mixed-use, hospitality, urban planning, and custom furniture. Our approach is both collaborative and customized. We explore work that stretches the boundaries of what an architect typically does; tapping the experience we’ve gained over time, generating innovative and transformative solutions.
We believe successful design provides a solid connectivity with nature while responding to client needs, desires, and their vision of a comfortable, livable, and functional environment. We create beautiful, sustainable, affordable architecture that meet the demands of the program and client and make a positive contribution to the world we share.
Who is Matt Nardella?
After graduating from the NewSchool of Architecture and spending nearly a decade designing sustainable architecture in San Diego, Matt returned to the character building climate of his native Chicago to found Moss. His work is known for utilizing site orientation, creative use of green building techniques, and sustainable building materials. Matt understands the urban environment and how to sustain it as a community for all living things. Matt enjoys The New York Times, cooking, and biking. He is not a fan of golf or flaxseed.
I knew I wanted to be a designer when:
Apparently, as a child, before I ever had memories. My Mom kept a ‘memory book’ for me while I was growing up, which was a place to keep a report card after each school year, list friends, hobbies, etc. I don’t recall writing this, but in first grade, in the section asking ‘what do you want to be when you grow up?’, I wrote ‘architect’.
My style in three words:
Sustainable, clean, responsive.
Design tip:
Hang loose. Construction is complicated, so it’s best to roll with the flow.
Best shopping sources:
Wherever I happen to be traveling. I have found design inspiration and specific pieces in all corners of the planet.
Color crush tight now:
Burnt Sienna, only because it is based on the color of earth in the town of Sienna, Italy. How cool is that?
Design element you’re obsessed with:
Volumetric light.
What’s your dream project?
Lucky for me, one that we are currently working on. It combines all of my favorite things; brewery, lodging, restaurant, landscape and southwest Michigan.
Your favorite places?
Places without people. I didn’t really understand the importance of sustainable architecture until I hiked the natural areas of Southern California while I was in college. Much like Thoreau’s realization, I didn’t appreciate the importance of what we were protecting until I was actually in contact with it. I love cities for their inherent qualities, but that they also maintain our untouched landscapes.
“Architects don’t have to wait around for their ideal project to come along. We can develop it ourselves.”
What’s your first source of inspiration?
The land and all the free elements of nature we can incorporate into the design.
Favorite project so far?
Two of my design professors in San Diego were Jonathan Segal and Ted Smith who taught me that architects don’t have to wait around for their ideal project to come along. We can develop it ourselves. Last year we completed our first foray into property development, Logan Certified, which is a mixed-use, adaptive reuse of an abandoned bodega. We acted as real estate broker, developer, architect, general contractor, and now landlord giving us the unique control over a project we don’t usually get to enjoy. It also has a wood fired pizza oven in the courtyard.
Favorite place to Travel?
Wherever my wife and I are going next, which happens to be the Dolomites of Italy and Spain’s Costa Brava. Like most of my travel, these two places combine hiking, biking, wine and food.
Favorite Restaurant?
Any place with oysters and sparkling wine and/or Piedmontese cuisine.
Favorite Hotel?
Hotel’s are nice for a day or two of pampering, but I prefer house rentals since they are usually outside of the main tourist zones of the world and help me really understand a place. In the days before AirBnb, I rented my first vacation flat in the early 00’s in Paris through Craigslist. It had a kitchen so we could shop at the local grocery and make a meal at home, and a view of the Eiffel Tower. I’ll never forget it.
Music you’re playing right now?
Since the days of WinAmp I have been listening to SomaFMs Groove Salad, a nicely chilled plate of ambient downtempo beats and grooves. It remains the soundtrack of my life 20 years later.
For more information visit www.mossdesign.com
