TRA Studio

TRA: Latin for ahead of, or in the midst of things; simultaneously the edge and the link to beyond. 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 and vision, promotes the user’s self-esteem and strives to solve society ’s collective challenges; we call it “design with integrity’.
At TRA, we believe that architecture can transform, both our environment and our behavior. 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 diversified of work, for diverse clients, 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 strives to achieve built design that is coherent, concise and meaningful, obtaining extraordinary results with minimum consumption. We use computation not to enhance image, but materiality, our studio is not a “shop”, rather, we know how to build; we see the execution as part of the design, in the pursuit of technical achievement as well as enduring beauty, as proven in the longevity and resale value of our spaces. Our work always strives to transcend expectations.

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 the historic districts, 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 and was selected as a top finalist in the Grand Army Plaza Competition in 2008. 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.

TRA studio is an award-winning multi-disciplinary practice; we excel in complex preservation and adaptive reuse challenges, new construction, retail environments, residential and commercial interiors. We take pride in the fact that our projects are built as well as they are designed.