Portrait Luke Thomson and Silvio Hochuli

Who We Are

Welcome to Studio Botanica!
We are Silvio and Lucas – two friends with a shared passion for handmade furniture and interior design. 

Who we are 

Studio Botanica is a maker of handcrafted teak furniture. We’re Silvio Hochuli and Lucas Thompson, Co-founders of Studio Botanica. We're two friends with industrial and interior design backgrounds who share a passion for craftsmanship, visual art, and woodworking.

Silvio hails from a family with a celebrated artistic and academic history, having grown up in the hills of Switzerland surrounded by nature and who loves to paint. Drawing inspiration from his Dutch Grandmother, Else Hessuer Van Arkel, whose notable works include a portrait of Prince Franz Josef II von und zu Liechtenstein – a cherished family friend, the late  Pascal Danz, heavily influences Silvio’s artistic style. In addition, he studied at the CENTRO diseño in Mexico City before completing his Bachelor's in Industrial and Product Design at Basel Academy of Art and Design FHNW and later completing his MSc in Strategic Product Design at TU Delft in the Netherlands. 

Lucas spent his early childhood in Australia, where he enjoyed cultivating exotic plants and citrus trees grown in volcanic soil and caring for horses on his family's farm. During these years, he became interested in botanical science, which developed into a passion for landscape architecture and design, before moving on to study Business at Bond University. He has lived in Hong Kong, China, Singapore, Brunei and now settled in the Netherlands for almost a decade – where he worked as a User-Experience Designer for The European Fine Art Foundation (TEFAF). 

Studio Botanica has a presence in Amsterdam, Zürich, and in our third home – Mumbai, India. In saying that, our objective has always been to build furniture of the finest quality. Hence, we make our pieces from aged reclaimed teak and hand-woven rattan cane. Therefore, each piece in our collection is individually assembled using traditional wooden joinery and weaving techniques – giving each design its own unique character.  

How Studio Botanica came to be

After a few long conversations at a family event in Italy – we realized a shared passion for Mid-century modern design, and visual art. Shortly after, we decided to meet in  Zürich and Co-found Studio Botanica – giving us a platform that combines our shared creativity and design thinking into a future collection with a focus on interior architecture. 

That being said, we’re two very similar humans fascinated by design history, which inspired us to re-create and customize Pierre Jeanneret's Modernist classics as they were made decades ago.

Lastly, we must acknowledge that with the help of our family of talented carpenters and weavers in Mumbai, everything we make is done by hand, without the use of machines, and with no detail spared. 

Aged reclaimed teakwood and sustainability

Our main ingredient to craft our furniture is aged reclaimed teakwood (Tectona Grandis) salvaged from old colonial-era buildings demolished in the wake of India’s decolonization. Most of our timber supply is from circa 1935-1950 and is around 70-90 years old. Moreover, by sustainably sourcing and using reclaimed timber, we reduce the harm to trees in the production process of our furniture, which is a value we hold dearly and emanate through the quality of each piece in our collection. 

At Studio Botanica, we are creating a confluence of the past and present by combining our knowledge and design experience, whilst maintaining a century-old family business deeply connected to Mumbai’s history. 

We look forward to sharing our journey and the colorful stories behind them with you as our unique design language is applied to our future collections.

Thank you for visiting, and please let us know if we can help in any way. 

Silvio & Lucas 

Co-founders

info@studiobotanica.ch