About
An independent studio in London, founded and run by Katherine Tachibana. Software for the many; a practice for the few.
The studio
A small, independent studio based in London. We build tools that help makers and operators move faster, decide with confidence, and ship without second-guessing. The kind of software you reach for because it removes a decision, not because it adds a dashboard.
Bottega is the workshop; soglia is the threshold. We sit right at the edge where a human idea becomes something a machine can execute, and make that crossing effortless.
We're impatient, obsessively logical, and relentless about execution. We say no early, so a yes means everything. We believe good tools quietly make everyone's day easier.
The founder
I have lived in London since 2006. I founded Bottega Soglia in 2024 and lead its work.
I began as a graphic designer, then spent two decades away from design entirely, inside large international companies, before coming back to it as a UI/UX designer. A move people are told is too late to make once you are that far into a career. It wasn't. 7 companies interviewed me; 3 made an offer. That is not a rate a career changer has any business getting, and working out why it happened, and how to repeat it, is what I have been building ever since.
Now I help professionals design their next move: a portfolio, a career step, a decision they have been circling, a screen that is not doing its job.
Every one of those looks like a matter of taste until you find the structure underneath it. Then it becomes something you can act on. The studio's products are that method, made repeatable and friction-free, so the answer arrives without the decade it took me to learn it.
What we make
- Prova — paste a UI, get decisions. Live.
- Calibro — design intent, turned into a system your tools can build from. In development.
- Cartografia — a divination-led decision practice, led by Katherine. By application.