In eighteenth-century Italy, the salotto was where people gathered to talk — writers, architects, politicians, anyone with an idea worth arguing about. The setting was elegant. The conversation wasn't always polite. Good things came out of it.
Il Salotto is that room for Scotland's architecture and design community. Somewhere to see products properly, hear someone speak without a sales pitch, eat well, and leave with a conversation you didn't expect to have.
The fourth floor of the Merchant Exchange, with tall windows, natural light all day, and a full working kitchen with a long dining table. The furniture is by our Club members and every piece of it moves — the room is a showroom on Tuesday, a lecture theatre on Wednesday and a private dining room on Thursday night.
Off the big room is Lo Studiolo — 18 sqm, twelve round the table, a door that shuts. The way every Renaissance palazzo had a small room for the conversations that mattered.
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20 Bell Street is a six-storey red sandstone warehouse designed by Campbell, Reid and Wingate between 1914 and 1921 — neo-Egyptian detailing, channelled pilasters, the kind of building Glasgow used to make when it was making things. Two lifts. Q-Park a minute away.
Sara Seravalli spent twenty years in showrooms in Milan, Paris, Pimlico Road and Clerkenwell before founding #DesignPopUp in 2014 — travelling events that have brought brands and specifiers together across the UK and Ireland ever since. Il Salotto, opened in March 2025, is where #DesignPopUp lives permanently.
She's Italian, she cooks, she judges the Herald Property Awards, and she will introduce you to someone before you've taken your coat off.
We're not a library of samples. There are bigger showrooms with more brands and you should visit them. What we have is one brand per category, a host who knows every practice in the room, and a table. Small on purpose.
We're open Monday to Thursday, 10 to 5, by appointment — and an appointment is just an email. Fourth floor, 20 Bell Street, Glasgow G1 1LG. Two lifts, Q-Park a minute away.