Designing Through Detail: A Conversation with Jasmine Pinto
Eight years after completing a home for a family in the Monadnock Region, SP Architects received a call. The clients had acquired an old barn from a nearby property, a structure that had been slowly giving way to time. The timber frame was dismantled, carefully labeled and brought to the site to be reborn as something new.
What followed was one of the most layered projects Jasmine Pinto has worked on. A Principal at SP Architects and one of the firm's most trusted voices, Jasmine has spent almost two decades helping shape the practice's approach to residential design, from the first reading of a site to the final details of millwork. The new barn would carry the memory of the original structure while meeting the demands of a completely different program.
That relationship between old and new, between the fixed conditions of a site and the aspirations of the people who inhabit it, is where Jasmine's work lives.
Listening First
Jasmine describes the start of every project the same way: listening.
"Listening is the biggest thing," she says. "Listening to the site, the views, the light. Listening to the client — what they are looking for, how they want to use the space."
She's also paying close attention to what clients have experienced before. "A lot of clients have been thinking about this for a while. They know what they did and didn't like in their previous home and they typically have a wish list for their new home." Those observations become part of the design brief.
Her instinct is always toward natural materials: wood, stone, slate. Not for ideological reasons, but because they behave well over time. "They make it look like they are supposed to be there. Timeless materials." She's equally clear about what she avoids. "Nothing too flashy. Avoid anything trendy that you'd know in five years is out."
From Concept to the Last Inch
At SP Architects, a residential project typically spans two to three years from first sketches to construction completion. Keeping the original intent alive across that arc requires discipline.
"It starts with the big picture, where you are headed, and as you go further into the drawings and think about the details, you have to remember where that started. What the goal was."
She's particularly attentive to the moments when projects lose their coherence. "If things get rushed, or if decisions are abruptly changed, that's when it happens." Good communication between design and construction is the counterweight, and the drawings themselves are part of how intent survives the journey. "Not only what, but the reason behind why." When a builder understands the thinking behind a detail, they are far more likely to honor it.
Details also have a way of changing the design itself. Working through a complex intersection, two materials meeting in an unexpected way, or a threshold condition that doesn't resolve cleanly, can open up new thinking about the larger design. "Once you get into those fine details and ask how do we make it work, it can have a snowball effect," she says. "Sometimes you have to step back and see how it fits into the whole." The detail becomes a lens.
Where Materials Meet
One of the quieter crafts in architecture is the handling of material transitions. Stonework meeting clapboard. An exterior wall becoming an interior one. These moments can feel awkward or invisible, intentional or arbitrary. Jasmine thinks about them carefully.
"Wherever you are choosing materials, you want to make sure it feels intentional. It should feel seamless. Easy on the eyes."
This sensibility carries through to the inside-outside relationship. In New England, the climate demands a robust building envelope, and yet the landscapes here call for generous windows and a connection to the outdoors that feels open. "We create a robust building envelope — double, triple glazing if it fits the budget. But clients often have great views, so we're thinking about that balance." The goal is continuity. "Always a flow. Not fragmented, but a continuous relationship. Something that feels natural."
The Details No One Notices
There's a category of detail that most people will never consciously register. Trim aligned at a corner. A window sill height matching an adjacent countertop. No one walks into a room and thinks: the trim is aligned. But they feel it.
"All the small stuff that makes sure things line up," Jasmine says. "Trim is aligned. People don't always notice those details. But you notice when they're not done correctly."
This is where the work at SP Architects extends all the way down, into millwork, cabinetry, the language of interior detailing. It's a dimension of practice Jasmine has made her own. She carries the architectural vocabulary established at the building scale into each room and joinery that define how people actually touch and inhabit a space. These connections are quiet, but they're what give a space its coherence.
What She Hopes People Feel
Jasmine has a simple answer to the question of what she hopes clients experience when they first walk into a finished home.
"That…this is what I wanted. This is my home. This is comfortable. That they're enjoying every aspect of the house; the views from each room, the comfort of a window seat, the breeze on the screen porch, etc."
She traces much of how she thinks about space back to her years learning alongside Sheldon Pennoyer, the Founding Principal. "I learned everything from Sheldon. How to visit a site, respect the land and design a building that settles in and feels like it has always been there. The importance of putting thought into every room, every detail and every transition. And thinking about how the building will be built as we design, making sure that we aren't designing things that are impossible to build." That observational patience, cultivated over more than a decade of shared work, runs through everything she does.
"It's pretty remarkable," she says, "to meet someone, hear what they want, and make that into a reality. And then to see past clients in the space, see how they're using it, how they love it."
That, finally, is what craft means to Jasmine Pinto. "Being careful about how things come together. Thoughtful detailing. Every little detail is cohesive, the materials, how they age." SP Architects is fortunate to have someone who understands that as deeply as she does.
Jasmine Pinto is a Principal at SP Architects. Over more than a decade with the firm, she has been a central contributor to its residential practice across New England, bringing the same precision and care to a building's broadest gestures as to its smallest details.