Victoria Sass has never questioned her path. “Design was an early and inevitable calling,” says the founder of Prospect Refuge Studio, the Minneapolis firm she established after studying architecture in Copenhagen and cutting her teeth on commercial interiors. Traveling internationally afforded her “clarity on what the Midwestern voice is”—and has compelled her to articulate it through cozy, craft-forward homes across the Twin Cities. Each is awash in a charming brew of intimate nooks, character-rich furnishings, and hand-forged pieces by regional artisans that evoke distinctly Midwestern ideals of warmth and humility. “We try to put as many human-made things as we can in our projects,” explains Sass, who collaborated on a lighting collection with local studio Hennepin Made and created a room based on her childhood home for the 2024 Kips Bay Decorator Show House Dallas.
Recently, she unveiled Prospect Refuge Gallery, the first independent collectible design gallery in Minneapolis, which opened with a solo show of vessels by Minnesota-born ceramist Jeremy Anderson and is now presenting sculptural furniture by designer McKeever Donovan.
"We try to put as many human-made things as we can in our projects” - Victoria Sass
Guiding philosophy: Sass aims to elevate Midwestern culture to the global stage through design in the same way that California modernism did for the West Coast. “It’s defining and exporting the Midwest,” she explains. “I don’t think anyone has explored that since Frank Lloyd Wright.”
Current projects: A lighting capsule suffused with regional stories for a major manufacturer, a potter’s house brimming with one-of-a-kind works by area ceramists on St. Paul’s historic Summit Avenue, and a private residence inspired by Celtic mythology in a high-rise overlooking the Mississippi River.
