Designer of Lil Baby's Atlanta home is Eskenazi's own

Growing up in Bloomington, Indiana, Annysa LaMantia (B.S. ’09, Interior Design) wasn’t allowed to watch more than an hour of TV a day. At the time, she says, that rule left her wondering, “Now what are you going to do with the rest of your day?”  

Answering that question required creativity. Arts and crafts, rearranging the living room furniture, and completing two cross-country cycling trips were just a few of the ways LaMantia rose to the challenge.

On the West End of Atlanta, just a few years later, Dominique Jones’ childhood was circumscribed with very different restrictions. Still, artistic creativity provided an outlet for him too. And eventually, a path to LaMantia.

While their disparate origins might have predicted against it, their intersection was fated by this shared dedication to creative problem-solving. That dedication has also launched each of these Atlanta-based creatives to the height of their respective industries. Known worldwide as the rapper Lil Baby, Jones can currently lay claim to the top spot on Billboard’s rap chart for his album “Wham”; he has earned one Grammy and seven nominations, an MTV Video Music Award, and two BET Awards; and made the best-selling album of 2020. LaMantia, who founded her eponymous design studio in 2017, has completed numerous luxury residential design commissions for high-profile clients, including in 2024, Lil Baby.

“This home is one of the things where I can see how far I came,” Jones told Architectural Digest (AD), which produced a video tour of the newly designed home he calls his “bachelor pad.” “It took a lot to get here.”

“It’s one of the biggest honors of my life,” says LaMantia, whose firm collaborated with Regents Custom Builders on this project. “For Dominique in particular, being able to raise his sons in an environment that was elevated from his own upbringing was key to him. I’ve been privy to some of those private moments, and it has been truly beautiful. It’s something that’s extremely hard to achieve. I applaud him and others who have changed their entire family.”

Certainly, a commission for an international celebrity that is featured in AD also ranks as a rare and difficult achievement. “We’ve been working hard for a long time,” LaMantia acknowledges. “Artists work tirelessly on their craft and then it’s hailed as an ‘overnight success’. With Instagram, it’s ‘insta-everything’! I want to tell younger people ‘It’s not overnight anything!’”

Far from the realm of luxury residential design, LaMantia’s own path began in Bloomington, where she was raised by visual artists Joe LaMantia and Merridee LaMantia, and attended Fairview Elementary, Tri-North Middle School, and Bloomington High School North, in turn. Along with not watching too much TV, she credits her origins for her success: “I wouldn’t change anything for the world about where I was born,” LaMantia says. “So many things that you find in the Midwest -- such as authenticity and diversity and openness and kindness -- are foundational pillars for me to this day.

“Bloomington specifically offered so many special experiences,” she notes. “It has such a dynamic arts culture. The Lotus Festival was pivotal to me in terms of thinking outside the box. That exposure to different ethnicities and different cultures. You see how big the world is. It showed me that any boundaries we have are false perceptions.”

The Bloomington native was always interested in going to Indiana University. While she gravitated toward the visual arts, LaMantia “wanted a degree that would umbrella my passions,” she recalls. “I wanted a career path that would give me some wiggle room. I didn’t want to commit to too specific of a path. Interior design was the perfect field for me.”

The rigor of IU’s interior design program, along with the LEED courses it offered, were particularly memorable to LaMantia, who in that more analog era also recalls “walking up the steps with a portfolio two-thirds my size.” Studying at IU gave LaMantia the opportunity to pair her interior design major with a minor in small business and entrepreneurship at the Kelley School, along with a studio art minor. She also wrote for the Indiana Daily Student. The college years are a time for “self-discovery,” she insists, to identify “who you want to be as a person or brand...in order to fuse [your] personal passions with things that would be helpful to [you].”

One summer, LaMantia obtained a four-month internship at KBA Architects in New York. “Being thrown into a fully functional business was very formative,” she says. After college, she pursued specialized product design training with renowned furniture designer Maurizio Manzoni at Studio Memo in Florence. Now a frequent guest lecturer at the Savannah College of Art and Design, LaMantia counsels students to “do as many internships as possible, to shadow as many people as possible, and not wait to be told what to do. Be very proactive. Your value is in what you know and understand, and the skills you’ve acquired outside of your schooling. You’re not necessarily an asset to someone just because of your speed on the computer.”

After moving to Atlanta in 2010 for a job at the high-end furniture company Roche Bobois, LaMantia enjoyed “a bunch of mini-breaks,” which she chalks up to “relationships, and leaving people with a good feeling.” She credits old-fashioned Midwestern friendliness, and some moxie, with establishing a connection to the singer Bobby Valentino. The condo she designed for him when she was still 22 was covered in Jezebel Magazine. That commission led to other clients in the entertainment and professional sports industries, including Khalid, Atlanta Hawks player Lou Williams, and a new client that per the NDA she just signed she may not name. “If the client publishes,” she says, “then I can.”

Williams, she notes, has played a particularly important role in growing her network. The basketball player who has employed her firm for many years is a “huge star, with huge fan base,” she says. “People look to people like him for recommendations. So, then it’s unstoppable.”

She was “overjoyed” to be connected through the Atlanta network to Lil Baby. “It’s a win for the home team,” says the designer, who is deliberate about acknowledging the collaborative nature of this work. When AD debuted the video tour of Lil Baby’s home in August, LaMantia’s studio brought everyone who had contributed to the project together for a watch party in an Atlanta warehouse—from contractors to artisans to movers. More than 500 people were in attendance. “People were over the moon to have that kind of acknowledgment,” LaMantia avers.

On any given day, LaMantia might be consulting with a glassblower creating a custom chandelier for a project or an illustrator drafting a ceiling design for another. “What’s so beautiful is that now I am working with every kind of creative. My job involves pivoting constantly. I’m putting a symphony together.”

That working in interior design at this level allows her to employ so many different artisans holds particular appeal for her.   “Having the presence I do, I am giving others a platform, so that these people can do what they love to do,” she says. “It’s not lost on me as a child of two artists, that those opportunities are life changing."

When she’s not working on high-end commissions, LaMantia has leveraged her design skills to change lives in other ways too. She has for example partnered with Goodr, the national hunger relief program that diverts food waste from the landfill to those in need. Founded in Atlanta in 2017 by Jasmine Crowe, Goodr established free grocery stores around the city. LaMantia’s firm designed the grocery stores that were set up in Atlanta’s public schools, creating a prototype that was easily replicated when Goodr scaled up nationwide.

LaMantia is quick to note that her high-profile client shares that community conscience. “On a regular basis, Dominique provides hundreds of coats and free groceries to Atlanta residents,” she said. “One day, he left the house to go to Popeye’s. I heard later that he gave $100 to every single worker at Popeye’s. It makes me proud to know him and work with him. What generating wealth does is that it gives you a chance to redirect funds.”

“My dream was always to be rich and take care of the family,” Jones remarks in the documentary “Untrapped: The Story of Lil Baby.” “It was my goal since I was a kid.” 

LaMantia knew she needed to tell that story in the design of his home – it's a priority for her to put design in the service of her client’s self-expression. Jones’ assessment of the project should provide some reassurance that she succeeded in doing so. “Not only does it feel like home,” he told AD, “it feels like a great accomplishment for me.”

For more information please contact

Yaël Ksander
Eskenazi School of Art, Architecture + Design
(812) 855-5512
yksander@iu.edu