“I used to go to school on a sleigh! I’m surprised I’ve become so urban,” says the London-based designer Tatjana von Stein. Despite the dramatic shift in scenery, her resolutely European upbringing—moving between Germany, the Austrian Alps and Paris before settling in the British capital in her teens—is evident throughout her practice. Since founding her namesake firm in 2016, von Stein has completed hotels, restaurants, members’ clubs and private residences—as well as design collectibles—that nod to the continent’s design heritage, whether that’s the Vienna Secession or Eurodisco. 

Annick Weber: European flair aside, how would you define your style? 

Tatjana von Stein: I can’t put an actual word to it, but there’s a feeling of nostalgia running through everything we do. Certain projects are sexier than others, but they are always quite indulgent in that they create little worlds that envelop people. And my work is very intuitive; maybe it goes back to the fact that I never actually studied design. If I look at the bar I designed for our Mise en Scène furniture collection, for example, it’s 90% true to the first sketch I ever did of it. 

AW: Can you give an example of the worlds that your designs aim to evoke?

TVS: We’re currently working on a 300-bedroom hotel in Munich. We did a lot of research on the city and it turns out it had a booming 1980s disco scene. Some of the biggest artists recorded there. We thought, Wow! Let’s bring that narrative up and reference it in our design. It’s how we differentiate our projects, though it’s only ever about gentle nuances in form and materiality that cultivate the essence of an era—I don’t want to create a themed hotel.

AW: Would you say your work focuses as much on creating experiences as it does on aesthetics?

TVS: I think a lot about the psychology of space: how people feel in a space or how they want to experience it. We’ve just completed a residential project in an Art Deco–inspired building in London, 60 Curzon, where we sought to echo the atmosphere associated with that era. When you think about Art Deco, you imagine people running around with martini glasses, being fabulous. So we brought this kind of theatricality throughout, in both our interior design and furniture. It’s the first project where the two really come alive together. 

AW: What inspires you right now? 

TVS: Dance is very emotive to me. I think it’s why I work a lot with reflective surfaces—glass, lacquered wood—as it’s never bland; things are in constant movement. I’m also into symbolism. We just did a plaster sun [wall decoration] at 60 Curzon, and we’re using suns and moons for the outdoor restaurant we’re working on with local makers for Hotel Corazón in Majorca. Once I start being interested in a theme, it suddenly begins appearing in all kinds of places.