Identity, website and management app for an estate in Tuscany

Casa Castagno is three restored Tuscan houses on a 48-hectare estate inside a nature reserve, between Arezzo and Anghiari. When we started there were no photographs: the property was still a building site.

The brief had three layers that are best explained together, because each one grew out of the last.

1. Identity. With no defined brand, neither the website nor the management dashboard had a visual standard to hold on to. We started from the chestnut tree the estate is named after, with a seal that works as well carved in stone as it does as a favicon.

2. Website. We generated the missing visual material with AI, art-directed to look like the real house and not a generic render, and built a website around direct booking, not the catalogue. It could go live before the property was finished.

3. Management app. With the house open, operations were split across Airbnb, Booking and direct bookings, each with its own commission and calendar. We built Estate Manager, an installable app that brings bookings, money and day-to-day operations into one place.

The identity starts from Tuscan tradition and the chestnut tree the estate is named after. The website was built on that base, telling the story of the three houses, the setting and the experiences, with a structure built around direct booking, no middlemen.

Art direction and AI image generation covered the lack of real photography, so the project could be presented and start winning bookings while it was still a building site.

Estate Manager brings together on one screen what used to be pieced together by hand: what comes in through each channel, who's arriving and what needs to be ready. It carries the house's own identity, so the owner works inside his own brand.

Dashboard. Monthly revenue, agency commission, owner net and occupancy for the year.

Calendar and bookings. Availability with every booking tagged by channel — direct, Booking.com and Airbnb — plus guest, nights, party size, amount, status and invoice.

Finances. The split between direct and agency revenue, and month-by-month trends.

Experiences. Private chef, truffle hunting, e-bike, cooking class, tasting and massage, each with duration, price and publication status.

Operations. A property profile with house notes, bedrooms, cleaning, maintenance and check-in/check-out protocols, plus contacts, suppliers, documents and team tasks.

It works in light and dark mode, and installs on a phone like any other app — which is how you run an estate you don't live in.