Southall Farm & Inn

“Truthfully, everything revolves around the farm. This is important.” Beatrice Girelli, Architect/Designer

Paul and Laura Mishkin may have been looking for a needle in a haystack when they sought an interior architect and designer for their destination resort in a 325-acre working farm in Middle Tennessee. This unique experiential project includes an inn and spa located in a central building, as well as cottages, tree houses, restaurants, an event center, and jammery built throughout the farm. 

Beatrice Girelli, founder and principal of Los Angeles-based Indidesign, was the perfect discovery: someone with substantial hospitality experience and a holistic vision, capable of crafting a compelling aesthetic for the project. 

Inspired by the “truly, truly, beautiful land,” over the next seven years, Beatrice said she led the interior architectural development, including “the design of every building, space, experience, and detail, down to the smallest touches.” This undertaking required integrating traditional Southern hospitality and a working farm that was home to perennial crops, a natural ecosystem, four million honeybees, thousands of apple trees, acres of native grasses, and a water feature.

Avoiding stereotypical concepts, the designer balanced the finest elements of farmhouse rusticity, like hand-troweled stucco and reclaimed wood, against bespoke murals and copper bathtubs. “For the furniture, I wanted a modern-meets-mid-century flair,” she said. “I achieved this by choosing Sossego furniture and mixing it with vintage and commissioned pieces. The Sossego chairs had a design sensibility and aesthetic that aligned perfectly with what I was doing. And the workmanship is quite beautiful.”

Beatrice chose several iconic Aristeu Pires-designed chairs in a variety of native Brazilian woods customized with leathers and fabrics that are at home in both rustic and modern surroundings: the Angela armchair in Jequitibá Ebanizado; the Laura Chair in Jequitibá Ebanizado and Pecan; the Gisele Lounge Chair in Jequitibá Ebanizado with black nautical cord for indoor and the Gisele Balanço with graphite nautical cord for outdoor.

 Making land-inspired choices like these helped Beatrice cultivate a sense of place, where visitors immerse themselves in nature through an authentic, farm-centered experience. “Truthfully, everything revolves around the farm,” she said, “as it should.”