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September/October 2021 “The walls are light-colored to emphasize the art. The touches of wood and the light are important for coziness.” Marc Chaya, resident Page 78

CONTENTS

features

COVER

Featured in this year’s Dwell 24, textile designer K’era Morgan smiles in her Los Angeles studio. PHOTO BY Kwaku Alston

70 Year-Round Oasis A mellow Byron Bay refuge foregrounds nature and retro glam. TEXT

Kate Hamilton PHOTOS

Natalie McComas ABOVE

Julien Pilon renovated a monumental 1960s home outside Paris for perfume executive Marc Chaya. PHOTO BY Alejandra Hauser

78 An Orphaned Masterpiece A French house with an origin shrouded in mystery finds new life. TEXT

Catherine Bolgar PHOTOS

Alejandra Hauser

88 Natural Fit Architect Kyu Sung Woo designs a home in Boston where he and his wife can age gracefully. TEXT

Marni Katz PHOTOS

Tony Luong

Norman and Benjamin Cherner designs made in the USA

chernerchair.com

September/October 2021 64

CONTENTS

“I craft objects that reflect my ever-evolving inner dialogue,” says Esi Hutchinson, one of the emerging designers featured in this year’s Dwell 24.

departments 17 Editor’s Letter 20 Community

31 Modern World

52 Renovation

64 Outside

The emerging designers making up this year’s Dwell 24 offer hope in a time of uncertainty. With intelligence, humor, and an eye for beauty in unusual places, these creators are showing us new worlds of possibility for our homes and beyond.

An artist turns an old auto repair shop in Berlin into a luminous studio and home for her family.

A vacation home on a windswept Quebec island offers a haven at the end of the world.

Gabrielle Golenda ILLUSTRATIONS BY Miguel Porlan EDITED BY

118 Sourcing See it? Want it? Need it? Buy it!

PHOTO: PEYTON SICKLES (31)

120 One Last Thing A classic chair reminds designer Peter B. Staples of simple pleasures.

44 Conversation Artist Esther Choi talks about how mentorship and networking are changing for the next generation of designers—and what that means for the future. Jess Myers Sam Kerr and Sol Cotti

TEXT BY

ILLUSTRATIONS BY

TEXT BY

Anna Dorothea Ker Robert Rieger

TEXT BY

Susan Nerberg Maxime Brouillet

PHOTOS BY

56 Interiors

98 Where We Live Now

Long-hidden sacred frescoes come back to light when a young couple transform a former chapel near Amsterdam into their new home and art studio.

A nonprofit Austin development provides homes and a community for people who have long lacked a place to live.

Liza Karsemeijer PHOTOS BY Alan Jensen TEXT BY

60 Backyard House A rental property in Los Angeles nurtures a creative community, thanks to architect Max Kuo’s imaginative redesign. Kelly Vencill Sanchez PHOTOS BY Brad Torchia TEXT BY

Mandi Keighran PHOTOS BY Benjamin Rasmussen TEXT BY

104 Budget Breakdown Resourcefulness and a knack for bartering helped a DIY couple build a micro-cabin nearly for free in the Canadian Rockies. TEXT BY

Stacey McLachlan Grant Harder

PHOTOS BY

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THE HIGHLIGHT OF YOUR KITCHEN CAN FINALLY BE YOUR SINK. EACH SHAWS SINK BEARS THE NAME OF THE CRAFTSMAN WHO MADE IT. THAT’S HOW THEY’VE DONE IT SINCE 1897 AND IT’S HOW YOU KNOW IT’S A GENUINE FIRECLAY SINK HANDCRAFTED IN ENGLAND.

PRESENTING GALLERY BY SHAWS.

H O U S E O F R O H L .C O M /S H AWS - G A L L E RY

SHOWN IN BLOSSOM.

editor’s letter

PHOTO: WESLEY MANN

Work and Progress

For three years, we’ve been asking everyone featured in the Dwell 24, our annual roundup of exceptional emerging designers (p. 31), to reply to a Proust Questionnaire–style survey about their lives and work. And this year, for the first time, none of them chose the dictum “less is more” as a personal credo. San Francisco designer Viviana Matsuda went so far as to call out minimalism generally: “I think it’s very arrogant and has notes of classism.” I don’t wholly agree. Taken as a style signifying the privilege to have a fashionably empty space, it is certainly, well, hollow. But I believe subtraction has merits that transcend trends. That said, I like the provocation in Matsuda’s statement. It has echoes in the work of many of the designers in this year’s group. Several told us about how they spent time during periods of lockdown and isolation by going deeper into their practice, honing ideas, and focusing on materials or craft rather than responding to external influences. That has resulted in work that feels personal—“That bench is me,” says North Carolina designer Esi Hutchinson of one of her recent projects—and that short-circuits many of the cyclical design trends we usually see. As always, we aim to spotlight designers from many different backgrounds working in a variety of media and in a multitude of locations and contexts, but as we put together the list, some common threads surfaced. Many are working with found or upcycled materials, or otherwise reckoning with waste in the furniture and textile industries. “We’re desire creators—and are probably very responsible for the amount of waste that society produces,” says Brooklyn designer Sean Kim. Others have looked to textiles as a medium for experimentation. Take Singapore designer Tiffany Loy, whose pieces slink down walls and otherwise unravel the rectilinearity of the loom, or New Yorker Liam Lee’s surreal squiggles built up over unnaturally vivid piles, or Brazilian Alex Rocca, who, armed with a tufting gun and a repertoire of oblique film references, makes satisfyingly textured wall hangings. Above all, as we put together the first Dwell 24 reflecting a transition from lockdowns toward cautiously venturing out, we saw a variety that defies pre-pandemic design trends in favor of individual obsessions. And if this period emboldens us to, like Matsuda, challenge orthodoxies about what our homes should look like—and to listen to designers who have spent this time refining their distinct voices—I can’t think of a better way for us all to emerge. William Hanley, Editor-in-Chief william@dwell.com

DWELL

SEPTEM B ER/O C TO B ER 2021

Dwell Editorial Editor-in-Chief William Hanley Managing Editor Jack Balderrama Morley

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SEPTEM B ER/O C TO B ER 2021

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comments

“This place is beautiful. Modern but soft and inviting.” @erikfountaine via Instagram

Comments [Re “Out of the Ofﬁce,” July/ August]: Hunt does some amazing work, and this home ofﬁce is such a great case study in simplicity and design clarity. ALNAAR, VIA DWELL.COM

[Re “Years in the Making,” July/ August]: This is a great home. Love the showcasing of the structural elements and overcoming living-space issues by building up within the existing

Re: Terrazzo footprint. New construction that retains the neighborhood’s design language is great! And while I’m not a huge fan of pine (it’s just so knotty), it works very well here, probably because it’s pine boards and not pine ply. What a great use of materials overall, especially the tile ﬂooring and the green tile wall in the bathroom. This is a thoughtful, well-designed, and well-built home. Enjoy!

It’s a classic! Cool underfoot and a breeze to clean. @MIALASSDEA

Looks cheap. May as well just have lino. @GEARETAL

I think it’s a great way to reuse materials.

I think it’s beautiful, but I know it will feel dated (again) in a few more years.

Classic on the ﬂoor! But terrazzo mugs? Candle holders? Planters? Overdone.

@ALEXROTEN

@KRISTI_STO

It’s a classic that should stay, like subway tiles, concrete, midcentury furniture, etc.

It’s on the tail end of the trend. When it’s in McDonald’s remodels, you know it’s over.

@DJOUGOULET

@HARDGOODSCO

@RENAMCCLINTOCK

REX MILLER, VIA DWELL.COM

Too busy. @DWELLULO

Instagram “It was the most unique property I’ve ever seen,” Mel Elias says about the crumbling 5,000-squarefoot Los Angeles house that designer Carter Bradley renovated for him. The idiosyncratic manse featured industrial skylights, massive fireplaces, and even a hidden passageway. Now, after 11 years of work, the house and all of its quirks are ready to be appreciated once again.

Growing up in Miami, it seemed to be everywhere. It brings back some really good memories.

POLL Love it or hate it: the terrazzo trend

@THEBULLFIGHTER

It’s timeless and gorgeous. And in the deep South it’s cool underfoot. @BETHEMOO

Easily pulls in many colors to a space and adds texture without looking overdone. @MISSYDUTTON

% 22%

Love

Hate

SEPTEM B ER/O C TO B ER 2021

DWELL

PHOTOS: ALEJANDRA HAUSER (“DREAM SEQUENCE” ); MANOLO LANGIS (INSTAGRAM )

COMMUNITY

Alix and Onur Keçe turned a 19th-century house outside Paris into a colorful second home for their family [“Dream Sequence,” July/August]. Details like rounded edges and subtly textured surfaces temper the interior’s minimalist design.

dwell.com

Big Plans

COMMUNITY

2 3

1. 13 Floor Plans for Beach Houses That Celebrate Coastal Living Perfectly positioned to embrace ocean views and salt-tinged breezes, these layouts make the most of their seaside settings.

2. 14 Cabin Floor Plans to Make Your Outdoorsy Dreams Come True These retreats are fine-tuned for relaxing and enjoying nature at its most glorious.

3. 9 Shipping-Container Home Floor Plans That Maximize Space Think outside the rectangle with designs that cleverly use limited square footage.

SEPTEM B ER/O C TO B ER 2021

DWELL

PHOTOS: DEREK SWALWELL (1 ) ; EUGENI PONS ( 2 ); CHRIS COOPER (3 ). FLOOR PLANS: COURTESY AUSTIN MAYNARD ARCHITECTS ( 1) ; COURTESY SNORRE STINESSEN ( 2) ; COURTESY POTEET ARCHITECTS (3 )

Whether you’re gearing up for your next build or just a sucker for the smart use of space, head to Dwell.com to browse our collections of floor plans. For cabins, prefabs, and more, these drawings reveal how it all comes together—and might help your own ideas click into place.

A RT F ULLY

A GE D

THIS IS WHAT DISCOVERING A LIGHT

AND

REFINED

W H I S K E Y L O O K S L I K E.

C LE RMO N T•K EN TU C KY S H A R E G E N E R O U S L Y. D R I N K R E S P O N S I B L Y. B A S I L H A Y D E N ® K E N T U C K Y S T R A I G H T B O U R B O N W H I S K E Y. 4 0 % A L C . / V O L . © 2 0 2 1 J A M E S B . B E A M D I S T I L L I N G C O . , C L E R M O N T, K Y .

dwell asks

What issues should emerging designers be concerned with? Readers weigh in on key considerations for the future of design. How to cope with climate change without making the climate worse. @f28278

Access and usability for people with disabilities. @realtrueblue meandyou

Sustainability and affordability. @myfordbox

Lack of affordable housing. @dordeidre

Social responsibility! Giving voice and opportunity to a diverse community. @larderlover

Materials and construction in response to new weather patterns. @james.g.lee

Sustainable fabrics and heat sources. @itsallwickedgood Bird-safe windows! @chrissol99 Wildfire smoke and rising temps. How to create creative cooling plans for homes. @jennshulllison Building codes that incorporate building science. @elainehigden Global warming in a real way—sustainable, affordable practice, not just fancy gadgetry. @sarah_blood

Recycling houses instead of tearing them down and sending everything to landfills. @redricka60

The life cycle of the product. @p3tes Reducing embodied energy in construction/fabrication. @studiohagenhall Healthy materials. @blvv.j

Reducing the carbon footprint of manufacturing. @havanahyde Incorporating innovative, new, and locally sourced materials into products and designs. @jschleppeceramics Using budgetfriendly materials. @thbarretta Getting back to simple yet modern products versus the latest (not sustainable) gadgets. @lotte.kingma Social sustainability after the pandemic and bioclimatic design. @hoorno_arc Energy use for new products, upcycling, and nontoxic materials for everything. @zachary_roush

SEPTEM B ER/O C TO B ER 2021

DWELL

ILLUSTRATION: AMBER VITTORIA

Eliminating plastics. @teq.parts

Fair-trade manufacturing and sustainability. @michael_weksler

TERRY & TERRY ARCHITECTURE | PHOTO: BRUCE DAMONTE Ha² ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN | PHOTO: JVL PHOTOGRAPHY

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P R O M OT I O N

A Paler Palette Architect Maria Berman on her New England retreat’s luminous white-on-white interiors.

“Vermeer paintings have a kind of streaming light, which I think is what everyone wants, even if they don’t know it,” says Berman Horn Studio’s Maria Berman of her ideal mood in a room. The architect doesn’t reveal right off that she studied fine art, but this statement—along with the sophisticated orchestration of color and light in her vacation home in Maine—gives it away. From the outside, the cottage Berman shares with her husband and architectural partner, Brad Horn, blends into the landscape, its weathered-looking shingles attuned to nature. But inside, a brilliant white-on-white palette gives the home an attention-grabbing glow, making it feel light and airy even in wintertime. For the exterior, Berman selected a shade of gray inspired by Maine’s rocky coastline and painted the front door in Benjamin Moore’s mossy Webster Green H-130. “The door color is always a big decision,” she says. “Bright hues in the country seemed too strong—the whole environment called for this green.” A focus on light reflection guided the designer’s interior color scheme. Off-white walls, ceiling, and trim—all in Silver Satin OC-26—meet floors glossed with “bulletproof” Benjamin Moore deck paint. Berman says the backdrop is “almost an absence, a lack of color that brings out other colors. Sometimes you want a color with opinions. Here, the paint gives everything else a voice.” Berman and Horn (pictured) chose Webster Green H-130 for the cottage’s front door.

DWELL

Read more at dwell.com/benjaminmoore Supported by Benjamin Moore, whose lush color palettes inspire great design.

BENJAMIN MOORE

PHOTO: GRETA RYBUS

Walls in Benjamin Moore’s Silver Satin OC-26 and ﬂoors in glossy deck paint bounce light around inside Maria Berman’s Maine vacation home.

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houses we love

Display Case

COMMUNITY

Lezanne Viviers’s residence overlooking Johannesburg doubles as a studio and concept store for her eponymous clothing line.

TEXT BY

Mary Holland PHOTOS BY | @THE_COOLEST_COUPLE

Simone Santilli and Niccolò Benetton

Lezanne Viviers (opposite, bottom left) and Walter Anderson refreshed a 1960s Johannesburg home originally designed by local firm Kock & Orsmond. The living room (above) includes a vintage Kartell table and ceramics from Artisafire, a South African nonprofit pottery studio.

Fashion designer Lezanne Viviers and her husband, Walter Anderson, hadn’t intended to move from their cozy apartment in Hyde Park, Johannesburg, let alone buy a new house—until they stumbled upon a modernist gem on a kopje, or small hill, overlooking the city at the junction of the Melville, Parkview, and Westcliff neighborhoods. “When I walked in, I was blown away by the view,” says Lezanne. So the couple put in a “cheeky” offer on the brick-clad, 1960s home. It was swiftly declined. When the property went back on the market some months later, the duo reached

out directly to the owners—a couple who had left the house uninhabited for a decade—and arranged a rent-to-purchase deal in 2018. “We were able to start restoring the home even before we owned it,” says Lezanne, who began pulling out rotted carpets, refurbishing the woodwork, and painting the walls in bold shades of mustard, tarragon, and turquoise immediately upon moving in. “Color is the most emotive tool I know,” the designer says. On the home’s lower level, Lezanne’s team of tailors and craftspeople produce clothing for her eponymous label in a

SEPTEM B ER/O C TO B ER 2021

DWELL

A patterned brick pathway leads through a cactus garden to the entrance (left), which is marked by a low, horizontal facade with wooden accents and splashes of color. The orange-red overhang is inspired by a torii (a traditional gateway to a Japanese Shinto shrine).

More at Dwell.com Do you have a project you’d like to see published in Houses We Love? Share it at dwell.com/add-a-home

glass-fronted workroom that spills out onto a wraparound balcony with garden views. The downstairs level also includes her brand’s by-appointment atelier and concept store. Upstairs, vibrant artworks and modernist furniture that Lezanne has collected over the years decorate the couple’s living spaces. The biggest overhaul was tending to the surrounding landscape, where indigenous trees had been swallowed by weeds while the home was left vacant. “It was like a

scene from Jumanji!” says Lezanne, who worked with her garden-designer friend, James Barry Slabbert, to reimagine the outdoor areas. The front of the home now features an expressive garden with sculpted trees and cacti from the Karoo desert, while the back garden, located on a rocky ridge, maintains its original junglelike feel. It’s here that Lezanne recently hosted a Viviers fashion show. “We always wanted to share the space with other people because it’s such a gem,” she says.

“The house is still in its original state. Our job was to bring in some color.” LEZANNE VIVIERS, DESIGNER AND RESIDENT

Steel-and-timber balustrades connect the multiple levels in the back (left). In the dining room (above), a tabletop ceramic by Marlene Steyn is one of many South African artworks in the colorful home.

DWELL

SEPTEM B ER/O C TO B ER 2021

The magic’s inside.

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ILLUSTRATIONS BY | @MIGUELPORLAN

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Modern World TH E DW E LL 24

Take a seat and dig into this year’s roster of the most exciting new names in design.

TH E DES I GN L I F E

How do our Dwell 24 designers see the world? We surveyed them to find out. The results—spread throughout the following pages—may surprise you.

Joyce Lin’s Exploded Chair encapsulates how some of us are feeling right now: a little jumbled, but still standing.

THE DWELL 24 The world has changed a lot during the past year, and the emerging designers on our annual list have ideas about who we are—and where we’re going. DWELL

SEPTEM B ER/O C TO B ER 2021

THE DWELL 24

MY S T UDI O I S…

87% A hive of productive clutter 13% A study in head-clearing minimalism

I F I H AD TO C H O OSE O N E … 44% Brutalism

30% CURITIBA, BRAZIL

@ __ALEXROCCA

Alex Rocca

a backing. “At the beginning I was shy,” he says, “not understanding much about the techniques, about the way forward, but I just kept doing it.” The result is a collection of richly colored and deeply textured wall tapestries made from natural fibers and dyes. Based in the southern city of Curitiba, Rocca draws inspiration from the mothers, grandmothers, and aunts he

remembers making textiles when he was growing up, as well as from the country’s modern architecture and his film heroes, like director Wong Kar Wai. Rocca plans his works with hand drawings, and he pieces them together with a tufting gun. “The result comes out of me,” Rocca says. “It’s physical in a very clear way. It has touch, sensations—it’s human.” —Nathan Bahadursingh

SEPTEM B ER/O C TO B ER 2021

PORTRAIT: ALEX ROCCA

26% Bauhaus

Alex Rocca’s career in cinema had a surprising plot twist. As an art director and scenographer, he cultivated a talent for conjuring locations through shape, color, and material, but he began to yearn for a more direct physical connection to his work. Two years ago, the Brazilian designer decided to take up tufting, a method of textile making involving punching yarn through

DWELL

THE DWELL 24

BLACK MOUNTAIN, NORTH CAROLINA @ CASEYJOHNSONSTUDIO

Casey Johnson Casey Johnson started as a sculptor, and his carved and compiled curvilinear forms recall the works of greats like Isamu Noguchi and Constantin Brâncus̋i. Since the North Carolina designer began making functional objects, he has gravitated toward materials that let him play with artistic flourishes. Wood is now his primary medium. “It’s an organic, living and breathing material that expands and contracts and has all kinds of surprises,” Johnson says. “Although my designs are typically very clean and controlled, I’m working with a material that is imperfectly beautiful. It is always a dance.” That artisanal approach keeps his work feeling personal even as his studio responds to growing demand. In pieces like a recently commissioned custom desk, the interplay of hand, tool, and material enlivens the object’s varied surface textures and, Johnson says, “reminds us of our humanity in a world of plastic and mass production.” —Keren Dillard BROOKLYN, NEW YORK @WOOJ.DESIGN

Face mugs and vases for the “We Are Everywhere” Pride show in Oakland. Viviana Matsuda, Mud Witch

Custom Desk for House on Willow Hill A policy document for a communal woodshop.

Wooj

Joyce Lin

Sean Kim didn’t start making furniture in the same way many others do. The Brooklyn designer was a programmer for nearly four years before he started tinkering with laser cutters and 3D printers. “I liked to watch the process of making—it was like magic,” Kim says. Working with these tools inspired Kim to go back to school and study industrial design at Pratt. After graduating earlier this year, he started his own office: Wooj. Kim hasn’t left his former life completely behind, though. He combines digital design tools with new materials like bioplastics derived from corn and technology like 3D printing to make his line of clocks, tables, knife racks, and lighting affordable for everyone. “Design within actual reach,” he calls it. “There shouldn’t be a huge amount of exclusivity in design—it should pull in as many people as possible.” —Gabrielle Golenda The Wavy Lamp

A new type of wall-covering, made from a range of environmentally responsible materials. Tiffany Loy

We are currently busy with flowerpots. Martin Duchêne and Charlotte Gigan, Studio Biskt

A doorstop. Gregory Beson, Studio Beson

SEOUL

@ HANG_JIN_

Jinyeong Yeon Jinyeong Yeon likes to work with fragile and discarded things. In his designs, textile waste, scrap aluminum, and old polystyrene resurface as lawn chairs and coffee tables. “My main concern is that our values are blurred or disconnected from our interests,” Yeon says, lamenting cultural obsessions with expensive and expendable products. The statement hints at the ecological zeal that has run through his work since he set up shop in Seoul in 2019. His objects are invitations to ponder the beauty hiding in dumpsters and landfills, and the transformations that might turn waste into useful or wondrous things. In his Padded seating series, Yeon collaborated with South Korean brand Shirter and used its unsold puffer jackets to create furniture. It’s a clear example of how Yeon wants to change the ways we evaluate design. “I think giving new values to beauty,” he says, “is one of the most meaningful things an artist can do.” —Juan Sebastian Pinto Padded Sofa

DWELL

THE LAST THING I DESIGNED WAS…

SEPTEM B ER/O C TO B ER 2021

MY DAILY CREATIVE RITUAL IS…

Deep breath in, deep breath out, and constantly reminding myself to just be observant as I go about my day. Thabisa Mjo, Mash.T Design

Linking up with my team on WhatsApp for constant banter. Ciaran McGuigan, Orior

Getting stuck in traffic on my commute is my greatest source of contemplation and creation. Joyce Lin

THE DWELL 24

I AM …

ROTTERDAM, THE NETHERLANDS

@ LAURIDS.GALLEE

Laurids Gallée

92% Right-handed 4% Left-handed 4% Ambidextrous

Austrian designer Laurids Gallée is a bit of a scientist—which might not be surprising, given that he studied anthropology before moving to the Netherlands to focus on design. Now, he is more interested in human behavior as it relates to pushing the possibilities of materials and craft. “On the one hand, I’m interested in finding the right material, proportions, repetition, and certain sculptural qualities,” Gallée says. “On the other, I’m obsessed with illustration, drawing, and the idiosyncrasies of traditional craftsmanship.” Objects like the Midnight side table embody this split spirit. Its flat surfaces feature a grid of pink lines and red dots in a field of green leaves inspired by historical marquetry. His conceptuality is balanced by creative looseness. The table, he says, “is a doodle I translated into 3D form.” —Adrian Madlener Midnight Side Table

JOHANNESBURG @THEURBANATIVE

TheUrbanative

SAN FRANCISCO

M Y FAVO R IT E M AT E RI AL IS… 26% Steel 21% Wood 9% Clay 9% Wool 5% Marble 5% Resin 5% Concrete 4% Fabric 4% Paper 4% Hair 4% Any pliable material 4% All of the above

@ MUD.WITCH

Mud Witch Viviana Matsuda, the San Francisco designer behind ceramics studio Mud Witch, has built a community by making her practice about more than objects. She sees her pieces as ways to talk about broad social topics like body-size inclusivity. “Some of my early works were in skin tones like naked bodies,” Matsuda says. “What if we didn’t worry about how people perceived our bodies and made more space for ourselves?” Matsuda’s positive messaging and brightly colored cups and planters embellished with playful squiggles have won fans the world over. The designer has turned her studio’s social media channels into places where people from different countries can come together, and she plans to start workshops to help others learn how to make their own pieces. Matsuda says, “I want to create a safe space where people can thrive and learn freely.” —GG

Johannesburg designer Mpho Vackier of TheUrbanative sees herself first and foremost as a pragmatic person. That sensibility is what led to her career as an engineer working in South African mines. But a lifelong creative bent, nurtured by her mother, a seamstress, compelled Vackier to save enough money to return to school—while raising a child of her own—and to study interior design. Now, she uses her engineering know-how more creatively, developing new forms for furniture by blending shapes derived from European modernism with motifs from African design traditions from across the continent. The Oromo chair, for example, was largely inspired by the intricate lines of 19th-century Ethiopian and Kenyan hairstyles. “It was such a mind-blowing experience to understand what people did to their hair,” Vackier says of the research she did for the piece. “I infused the energy of those lines, textures, and forms into my work.” —GG Oromo Occasional Chair

From top: Trippy Loop Mug, Squiggle Mug, and Daisy Mug

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PARIS

@ SABOURINCOSTES

WAYS I PROCRASTINATE…

Sabourin Costes “Right now, we’re slightly obsessed with resin,” says Zoé Costes, cofounder of Paris design practice Sabourin Costes. The material is perfectly suited for the studio’s experiments with transparency and reflection, its mutability lending itself well to various colors and shapes. “It feels like a playground to us—we spend days making new color recipes and

testing different finishes,” Costes says. Since joining forces in 2019, Costes and codesigner Paola Sabourin—who met at Design Academy Eindhoven seven years prior—have applied this whimsical approach to a range of products, including hardware, vases, and seating, like the stool from their Boudin collection (below). Another highlight of theirs is

Tribune, an interpretation of a cabinet de curiosité, where the shelf’s high-gloss finish mirrors and appears to multiply the objects on it. “Even though the shelf can be relatively small, it is designed to have impact,” Sabourin says. “We liked the idea of having something like a miniature piece of architecture hanging on the wall.” —Dora Vanette

If I want to procrastinate big time, I walk the entire length of L.A.’s Wilshire Boulevard—sixteen miles of divergent neighborhoods and architectural styles. I take a friend and make a day of it. A meal in K-Town is mandatory. Thomas Musca, Cassius Castings

I like to cook. Every week I invent a new recipe. I like to lie in the sun with my cat. Read comic books. Play board games. Run. Eat ice cream on the beach. Alex Rocca

THE EVERYDAY OBJECT I WOULD LIKE TO REDESIGN IS…

The fanny pack. I want to like it, but there are some major design flaws regarding size and position, which is why I made my own that I use every day. Joyce Lin

A humane redesign of the cell phone, such that it returns to its original role as tool, rather than all-consuming, addictive, soulcrushing device. (I have a problem managing my phone usage, clearly.) Sean Kim, Wooj

The face mask. If it were both effective and extremely comfortable, it wouldn’t feel like a hassle to use it. Tiffany Loy

PORTRAIT: EDOUARD AUFFRAY

MY HEROES IN DESIGN AND LIFE ARE…

Well, my fictional heroes are Tom and Jerry, but someone who gives without expecting something in return is a reallife hero. Richard Yasmine

Nature. Everybody copies her. Llane Alexis

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I D O MY B ES T WOR K… 39%

17%

13%

31% Late at night

I WO RK B ES T W IT H… HOUSTON

@JOLIME

Joyce Lin

23% Silence 13% Podcasts

the dismembered parts of her Exploded Chair are suspended— Damien Hirst–style—in acrylic, as though frozen the moment before they come together or fall apart. By working with objects others have discarded, the designer calls attention to how materials are sourced and resources are used and exploited, an interest that goes back to her student days, when she pursued dual degrees

in geology-biology and furniture design at Brown University and RISD. After graduating in 2017, the Alabama native started her design practice in Houston, where she also manages a woodshop in a 300,000-squarefoot makerspace. There, she is surrounded by tinkering engineers—fitting neighbors for someone dissecting the conventions of furniture design. —JSP

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PORTRAIT: CHRISTOPHER LEE

Music

Like an enthusiastic anatomy professor redecorating her living room, Texas designer Joyce Lin exposes, explodes, and suspends the components of formerly familiar pieces of furniture. For Skinned Table, she peeled away an otherwise ordinary specimen’s varnished surface and pinned it back on a few inches above the underlying wood, making skin levitate over bones. Similarly,

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BEIRUT

THE SKILL I WOULD MOST LIKE TO LEARN IS…

@ RICHARD.YASMINE

Richard Yasmine Beirut designer Richard Yasmine sees two forces pushing his work. The first is a desire to highlight contemporary social and philosophical issues, and the second is to do so in a distinctly personal way that honors his Lebanese heritage. The result is a style that, in Yasmine’s words, “mixes craziness with sobriety and a dash of fantasy” and probes heavy topics like preparing for a possible afterlife while drawing from forms dating back to the Stone Age. The black-andwhite-striped After Ago series, for example, is inspired by Memphis, Art Deco, and brutalist motifs as well as Yasmine’s feelings about his home city and its history. Or take the all-white “The Cure” (Heavenly Pie(a)ces) series, which “is intended to help people struggling with perceived complexities of beauty and time,” Yasmine says. “The chair’s backrest is reminiscent of a tombstone, which invokes a message of destiny and regeneration. The pendulum clock is a reminder to seize the moment.” —AM After Ago

SANTA MONICA, CALIFORNIA

@ CASSIUSCASTINGS

Cassius Castings Thomas Musca, the founder of Cassius Castings, has a fascination with concrete. In 2019, the Cornell architecture grad began experimenting with glass fiber–reinforced concrete furnishings inspired by John Lautner’s Sheats-Goldstein residence and 20th-century Soviet brutalism, both quintessential examples of “concrete forms highlighted by poetic vacancies,” Musca says. His hobby snowballed into a Santa Monica, California, business of made-to-order furnishings and custom site-based projects that push concrete’s possibilities. “As long as you can envision a negative space that is structurally sound, you can create it,” he says about the material’s plasticity. “Concrete isn’t oppressive. It creates spatial light qualities that help you appreciate the environment around you.” Part of Musca’s concrete evangelizing involves “pour parties,” where he invites friends and prospective clients to mix and pour the substance into a mold and then watch as furniture materializes before their eyes. —GG

I’d like to practice making cordage and become more knowledgeable about knot tying. It seems truly magical to create something so useful from what might be regarded as detritus. Gregory Beson, Studio Beson

JOHANNESBURG @ MASHTDESIGNSTUDIO

Mash.T Design Studio Johannesburg designer Thabisa Mjo couldn’t have predicted where her work would end up. After graduating with a degree in film production design in 2013, she decided to take her knowledge of lighting, construction, and narrative into “the real world,” as she puts it. The result was her first lighting collection, Tutu, which uses a colorful, pleated lampshade to recall the fabrics of a traditional xibelani skirt worn by South African Xitsonga women. In 2015, Mjo impulsively entered the fixtures into the Nando’s restaurant chain’s Hot Young Designer Talent Search and won the chance to create a lighting design that is now used in restaurants around the world. Mjo has since found fans in more rarefied circles as well. The Louvre’s Musée des Arts Décoratifs has made two of her works, a Tutu light and the Mjojo cabinet, part of its permanent collection. —GG

If metaphorically, I can say “control my emotions.” Richard Yasmine

MY MOST TREASURED POSSESSION IS…

An opal strung on a necklace that my father gifted my mother for one of her birthdays. She passed it on to me before she transitioned. We are both Libras, and opal is our birthstone. It’s shaped into a sphere bead, which is almost impossible to do because opal is a soft stone. It wasn’t until several years ago when opals became trendy that people commented on how beautiful it is. K’era Morgan, k-apostrophe

Bright Light

Rocker + Ottoman

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PARIS

@ DOPPELSTUDIO

Döppel Studio Parisian designers Jonathan Omar and Lionel Dinis Salazar of Döppel Studio have extracted humor from a rather hopeless time. “During this year of hibernation, we kept thinking about how people like us weren’t shaving,” says Omar. “So,” adds Dinis Salazar, jumping in, “we decided to apply this effect of the lockdown to modern design icons and see how it would change them. Would they still be recognizable? Would they have the same effect in a room?” The result—their Hairy Design Icons series—has turned such classics as Marcel Breuer’s Wassily chair and Big-Game’s Bold chair (left) into shaggy explosions of electric blue. Though the pieces were originally only available as NFT collectors’ cards, they will soon be physical. “For us, digital techniques are a way to push the boundaries of the realms of possibility, and we work hard to make the physical match our digital ambition,” Omar explains. —DV Hairy Design Icon 002

I FO L LOW… 44%

26%

FAIRVIEW, NORTH CAROLINA

@ ESIHUTCHINSON

Esi Hutchinson

30% Fun

“That bench is me,” says Fairview, North Carolina–based designer Esi Hutchinson about Occurring Between Me, her surprisingly complex cherrywood seat. From above, the piece could be any other simple wood bench, but a peek below reveals a hectic clutter of crisscrossed supports on one side and two straight legs on the other. She describes the duality between the chaotic (but still functional) forest of legs and the comparatively staid side as semiautobiographical. In fact, the 2020 RISD grad says this thread of self-reflection runs through all of her work. “When I’m working on my designs and different projects,” Hutchinson says, “I’m just trying to become a better person—or the person I would like to be.” —NB

SAN FRANCISCO

@ LLANEALEXIS

Llane Alexis Some people wake up and brew a cup of coffee to get their day started. Artist Llane Alexis does a headstand. The inversion reflects his distinctive approach to design, which takes waste and turns it into something useful. Alexis began his artistic career in 1997 as a painter in Havana and went on to make a name for himself designing handbags and other accessories. But in his latest chapter, he has begun making furnishings and other objects for the home that mesh painting, sculpture, and personal history—like braided baskets made from salvaged materials. “I like to use things that are discarded and work with natural fabrics like denim, cotton, and silk,” he says. “I love color blocking and playing randomly with my fabrics.” That approach and his signature braiding style draw from the handcraft traditions of his hometown, where people would get creative with whatever resources were available. Alexis is now taking that intelligence to the design world through collaborations with California brands like Dosa and Heath Ceramics. —GG Braided Basket with Ceramic Handle

Occurring Between Me

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BRUSSELS

@ STUDIO_BISKT

MY EARLIEST MEMORY OF AN ENCOUNTER WITH DESIGN…

Studio Biskt Since establishing Studio Biskt in 2018, Charlotte Gigan and Martin Duchêne have combined their skill sets—Gigan is a ceramicist and Duchêne an industrial designer—to push the possibilities of their material of choice. “We want to take clay out of its usual form as cups and vases to show it’s not fragile,”

Gigan says. Case in point: their ongoing Balik project, a series of objects incorporating modular clay brick extrusions. In the Balik bench, the clay units span two parallel tubes of metal to create the seat, proving the material’s ability to create a strong, reliable support for every sitter. But their products are more than

just engineering innovations; they’re also playful experiments that show how industrial systems can be used to create things surprising and beautiful. Where the duo’s explorations will take them is anyone’s guess. As Gigan puts it, “Our products are constantly in movement and never finished.” —AM

It really came in the form of fashion. I remember being five or six years old and showing up at school in a huge pink satin baby doll/ballerina/ tutu dress and everyone looking at me like I was weird. Thabisa Mjo, Mash.T Design

As a kid growing up in Havana, playing baseball was practically mandatory. I hated the sport and still do. But the hand-stitched mitts and baseballs were so beautifully made and are of heirloom quality. Llane Alexis

A CONTEMPORARY DESIGN TREND I DESPISE IS…

Minimalism. I think it’s very arrogant and has notes of classism. Viviana Matsuda, Mud Witch

Design that embraces the use of expensive material as the predominant feature of the work really bothers me. I think opulence for opulence’s sake is pretty gross, given the state of the world at the moment. Sean Kim, Wooj

Epoxy resin tables. Esi Hutchinson

Trends are fine. It’s more the general lack of originality within these trends that is a bit sad. Laurids Gallée

PORTRAIT: ULRIKE BIETS

WHAT I WISH NONDESIGNERS UNDERSTOOD ABOUT THE DESIGN INDUSTRY…

A very large amount of what designers say is absolute handwavy garbage, and for the most part we are not to be trusted. We’re desire creators— and are probably very responsible for the amount of waste that society produces. Sean Kim, Wooj

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I SK ETC H W IT H … 43%

43%

I NS TAGR AM IS… 48% A promotional tool LOS ANGELES

13% A homogenizing force in the design world 4% I don’t use Instagram

K’era Morgan K’era Morgan started out as a visual artist, but saw home furnishings as a way to make her creations more accessible to those who might not be able to buy original artwork. “I started with a collection of eight throw blankets, simple as that, because I have a natural affinity for home,” the Los Angeles designer says.

“And everybody has some sort of connection or memory with a blanket.” Her line, k-apostrophe, now also features tapestries, pillows, and prints, all showing off painterly splashes of subdued and comforting colors bounded by organic shapes and lines. Although her patterns hold their own on a flat surface, they really

come alive in three dimensions. “I want to see how a twodimensional surface will change when I make it into an object that can also be folded or wrapped around,” Morgan says. “When you lay your head down and a surface creases, what happens? There are some beautiful surprises that happen—and I like that.” —KD

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PORTRAIT: KWAKU ALSTON

35% An amplifier for design ideas

@ K_APOSTROPHE

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THE DESIGN WORLD CAN BE MORE INCLUSIVE BY…

NEWCASTLE, ENGLAND @ MACCOLLINS__

Mac Collins You could say that Mac Collins is a storyteller as much as he is a designer. Though he started at England’s Northumbria University with an idea about studying sculpture, he soon developed an interest in creating functional objects that could become part of the narratives of peoples’ lives. “Making chairs is almost the perfect embodiment of that for me,” says Collins, now a designer in residence at his alma mater. He infuses his work with complex histories, through both visual aesthetics and how his objects manipulate the body. His breakout project, the Iklwa chair, was an exploration into his AfroCaribbean heritage. The piece is meant to evoke feelings of power and prestige in its user, serving to protest the oppression of his ancestors. “I want to weave these stories into things,” Collins says, “and let the narrative lead the design process.” —NB

Not only including BIPOC, fat, queer, differently abled folks etc., but also creating an environment where they are comfortable. Asking folks how to make them more comfortable is the best way—and only way—to know what people’s needs are without assuming. Assuming people’s needs can be harmful and offensive. Viviana Matsuda, Mud Witch

Lowering tuition costs for design schools and providing more financial support for emerging artists and designers who do not have family wealth as a safety net. Joyce Lin SINGAPORE

@TFFNYLY

Tiffany Loy Singaporean designer Tiffany Loy describes the weaving loom as the earliest computer, its products a binary system of threads going under and over one another to create images. Her work— shaped by studies in Singapore, England, and Japan—unpacks thousands of years’ worth of knowledge and techniques. With weaving, “there is so much that one can discover,” Loy says. “For example, the same white threads used to weave two different fabrics will result in different shades of white, since the behavior of light and shadow depend so much on the texture.” Though she works with an eye to the past, her creations are inventive and often delicately complex. Her Pastiche textile layers two patterns: Zigzagging fine blue woven lines run over bold painted yellow lines. The composition distorts when stretched over the folds of a Zanotta Sacco bean bag chair, turning a familiar form into something new and beguiling. —KD

Iklwa Chair

Many groups are excluded from accessing and using certain types of design. Similarly, there are areas of the design sector that are not yet open to designers from all communities, which limits the pool of experiences influencing the design of objects around us. The greater diversity in experiences feeding into the industry, the more sensitive the industry will be to a wider range of individuals. Mac Collins

Structural Gradient I 960

BROOKLYN, NEW YORK

@ B__E__S__O__N

Studio Beson Brooklyn’s Gregory Beson began his career as an apprentice woodworker, learning the trade on renovation and restoration projects in New England. But he started making furniture as a way to create more intimate relationships between objects and their eventual owners. “Every stick of walnut is different, so every table I make is different—the client gets a special table…their table,” he says. After graduating from Parsons School of Design, Beson introduced a line of wooden furniture alongside more experimental pieces made from materials like rock salt and bonemeal. In whatever medium he is working, Beson subtly composes lines and surfaces, as in the quietly complex Thirds table, made of solid walnut modules. Now, as an instructor at Parsons with students and apprentices of his own, he has the resources to explore, guided by his belief in deliberate humanism. “Design should have a tenderness toward people,” he says. “It should be thoughtful, caring, and decisive.” —GG Thirds Table

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MEXICO CITY

@ATRAFORMSTUDIO

Atra Form Studio Though Atra Form Studio exudes a distinctly Mexico City cool—no surprise, given its flagship gallery is in chic Colonia Roma, across from famed restaurant Rosetta—its refined but robust furniture is shaped by influences from around the world. Creative director Alexander Diaz Andersson pulls from his SwedishMexican roots, while his mother, Maria, business partner, James Williams, and their team of designers from across Europe and the Americas lend their skills to create work with an increasingly global appeal. But that doesn’t mean the company’s output is anything approaching generic. Williams describes the bold but streamlined forms of pieces like the Ala chair as having a “Scandinavian midcentury modern origin but mixed with the flavors and feelings of Central America.” —JSP Ala Chair

I B E L I EV E… 0% Less is more

22% More is more

NEW YORK

@ STUDIO_LIAMLEE

Studio Liam Lee Liam Lee’s textiles contain multitudes. The meandering lines and clustered forms that traverse his throws can alternatively be seen as representing microbes, star charts, or topographic maps. “I let the compositions unfold organically,” the New York designer explains. “I think of them as large-format, slow sketches.” For Lee, the laborintensive process of dyeing and hand-felting merino fibers into a woven base began in 2019 as a side project from his day job as a set designer. When the Covid-19 pandemic halted productions, he was able to keep working on textiles from the confines of his apartment, and the solo design practice became a full-time pursuit. While Lee’s panels are available through the Noguchi Museum and Heath Ceramics, they live a second life on social media, where their tactile qualities translate vividly. “My goal is to provide a space that viewers can project themselves into,” Lee says, “to allow for a moment of meditation.” —DV Series 01, Item 61

NEWRY, NORTHERN IRELAND

@ ORIOR_FURNITURE

Orior 78% Just enough is enough

Though Brian and Rosemary McGuigan established Northern Irish furniture line Orior in 1979, over the past two years the company has been reinvented under the creative direction of their son Ciaran—with the help of their daughter Katie, an occasional adviser who runs her own clothing line. “Building on a brand my mom and dad started forty-two years ago, I didn’t want collections,” Ciaran says. “I wanted to create objects with their own identity.” He and his U.S.-based team are reimagining pieces from archival lines in new styles. Katie, in London, is drawing on her experience as a fashion designer to create work like the Orcal rug, which features a bold print inspired by the Irish countryside. The McGuigans are reinvigorating their brand through more than just furnishings. In Georgia, where Ciaran went to school, the company is creating a space where staff can meet with clients. Ciaran says, “It’s where we’ll bring our ideas together.” —GG Orcal Rug

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NEW YORK

@ BLUEGREENWORKS

ALL DESIGN SHOULD…

Blue Green Works Designer Peter B. Staples brings a cinematographer’s eye to his designs for Blue Green Works, the studio he founded last year with longtime collaborators James McAvey and Dan Persechini, who handle the business side of things. Staples studied film in college, when he considered the field the nexus of his curiosities about architecture, fashion, and

narrative, but eventually found his way to design, where his multifaceted interests have informed his work. Take the studio’s inaugural Palm lighting collection, which was inspired by the “brutal beach modernism” and storied hedonism of Fire Island Pines, the gay vacation destination. “The luminaires were conceived around sex and voyeurism,”

Staples says. “They change as you move through them and play with different vantage points or transparencies.” The studio is based in New York, and the city is providing more inspiration for its next act. “Here, people live out their dreams on the streets and in the restaurants, inside stores and bars,” Staples says. “I think it’s all kind of like a movie.” —AM

Evoke a kind of emotional connection. Richard Yasmine

Be open source. Martin Duchêne and Charlotte Gigan, Studio Biskt

Be honest. Casey Johnson

Last. Ciaran McGuigan, Orior

MY DREAM HOUSE HAS…

A Chieftain chair by Finn Juhl, 005 coffee table by Soft Baroque for Vaarnii, and an original painting by Chris Ofili. An iteration of the Soap table by Sabine Marcelis as my office desk, and a side table by Simone Brewster. Mac Collins

A tree. Jonathan Omar and Lionel Dinis Salazar, Döppel Studio

Windows everywhere and Pierre Paulin’s Osaka couch. Paola Sabourin and Zoé Costes, Sabourin Costes

A spacious woodshop with air-conditioning, dust collection, and spray booth. Joyce Lin

AFTER THE PANDEMIC, I’D LIKE DESIGN TO BE DIFFERENT…

Less mass-produced, more bespoke, more appreciated. Tiffany Loy

PORTRAIT: MOHAMED SADEK

More More More More

realistic. open. approachable. conscious.

Peter B. Staples, Blue Green Works

I think it would be helpful for the world if design were more sustainable physically and economically. Esi Hutchinson

conversation TEXT BY

Jess Myers

PORTRAIT BY

ILLUSTRATIONS BY | @SOLCOTTI

Sam Kerr

Sol Cotti

With a series of free and candid online discussions, Esther Choi creates spaces in which students and young designers can learn from more established peers about how to navigate—often unsupportive— professional worlds.

Esther Choi The multidisciplinary artist is building a global community to nurture the next generation of designers. When we imagine mentorship in the design ﬁelds, we might think of networking in a conference room where people in button-down shirts nervously thumb at their CVs and portfolios, hoping for the right eyes to notice and guide them. Or maybe we think of the slow churn of a young professional apprenticing for a more established one, waiting for the senior to fall so the junior can rise. Esther Choi has a different vision. Choi, an artist with a PhD in the history and theory of architecture from Princeton and a practice that straddles design, photography, and the culinary arts, is creating a new mentorship model that ties together minds around the world. Since the summer of

2020, she has been organizing sessions connecting young BIPOC students and practitioners in informal online conversations with more established design professionals of color. She calls the events Ofﬁce Hours, with each session starting off with a different speaker. Choi sees the conversations as akin to an open-ended, socially engaged art project that may raise more questions than it answers. In these Zoom rooms, all topics are on the table, from money to identity to professional licensure. Together, new designers create a form of solidarity with leading professionals by asking the question, “What challenges have you had to overcome, and how will we overcome ours?”

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Make an impact. LifeStraw Home Water Filter Pitcher Behind this Scandinavian eye candy is a pitcher that filters out over 30 contaminants (including bacteria, lead, microplastics, parasites, and PFAS), a company that fights for the planet, and a give-back program that provides millions of children with safe water. Discover more at lifestraw.com/home.

conversation

Choi’s work spans various media, including video, photography, and publications like Architecture Is All Over, a collection of essays and design proposals she edited with architectural historian and theorist Marrikka Trotter that came out in 2017.

How did you come up with Office Hours? It began in July of 2020 as a practical response to all the questions people were asking me about applying to PhD programs. Basically, I couldn’t have 22 separate hour-long conversations, so Office Hours seemed like a practical solution to group people together. Most of the folks who had inquired were people of color younger than myself. I think for those who are first-generation college graduates, it’s difficult sometimes to understand how to navigate academic channels. I certainly identify with that because I’m the first in my family to get a college education. I advertised the first Office Hours sessions online—and, shockingly, people from more than five countries attended them. How did you think about tailoring these conversations to be relevant to an audience of young people of color? The format is that speakers present for only the first 15 to 20 minutes and the rest of the 75 minutes are for Q&A. Attendees do a lot to shape the space. They bring

their own perspectives and subjectivity through their questions. We try to be really inclusive and intersectional. Some of the things that come up a lot are questions around money and generational wealth—questions of how one builds a career when you don’t have a honeypot that your parents or your ancestors have set aside for you. There are also questions about gender, ability and disability, immigration status, and language. We have a real space of multiethnic and multiracial solidarity that to me is where the political potential of listening starts to develop. Listening to the experience of another, not only do you start to realize that you can identify with people who may not look exactly like you, but you also understand that white supremacy has affected you in some similar ways. And also that one’s own uplifting is inherently connected to the liberation of another. When architect Mark Gardner and designer Jacqueline Shaw gave a session on becoming a licensed architect, we received feedback on something that Jacqueline said about why one should bother getting licensed when it’s such an ordeal. Jacqueline’s response was related to the political potential of licensure. She said it’s related to her ability to help uplift and level the playing ﬁeld for others. That resonated with a lot of people. Ofﬁce Hours is not about competition and getting ahead—but what one does when one has access to increased resources or power or visibility.

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BOOK: DESIGNED BY NEIL DONNELLY AND BEN FEHRMAN-LEE

This year, the program features creative professionals like Tammy Eagle Bull, the ﬁrst Native American woman to gain an architecture license in the United States, and Sumayya Vally, the youngest designer of London’s prestigious annual Serpentine Pavilion. (Vally was proﬁled in Dwell’s July/ August issue.) We spoke with Choi about her experience facilitating the program and what she hears from young designers.

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conversation

Choi’s 2019 conceptual cookbook, Le Corbuffet, translates the work of famous designers and artists into fanciful recipes, such as the Faith Ringgold Harlem Cocktail.

I want to get into the concept of mentorship in architecture. There’s always a fetishization of the idea that this architect begat that architect. But how do you see mentorship differently? Yeah, there are deﬁnitely sorts of lineages or royalties that exist within the design ﬁeld. It’s a narrative that some individuals and schools really try to promote. I’m obviously less interested in that because it’s a very aristocratic model. Actually, the idea of mentorship is really about dismantling the tenets of singularity and competition that white supremacy engenders. What if, instead, we were to generate a culture of generosity and sharing? We might develop a different set of ethics around labor and a different set of ethics around shared responsibility. Put even more simply, I’ve mentored because if I can share how I navigated certain situations to help alleviate the frustrations of someone else, then why not?

What have you found that young people of color are pushing for or asking for? About a year ago, students were asking for accountability and feedback measures within institutions. Yet very few of those in positions of authority have implemented measures of accountability for themselves. Those things are not difficult to do. It’s not difficult to demonstrate incredibly good leadership that actually builds in those measures. I think this is a time when people’s dishonesty is coming out. There’s a lot of virtue signaling, and yet very little structural change has taken place. And students seem incredibly frustrated. So I think young people want to see actual implemented change and have real dialogues that don’t just end up with young people doing all the work and unnecessarily having a burden put on their shoulders to transform cultures of work and learning. I don’t think that’s an unreasonable request. Information about how to join future sessions is available at office-hours.design.

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P R O M OT I O N

Prized for their rich color and fine, even grain, the lumber and timbers of today’s replanted (known as second-growth) redwood forests come in a range of dimensions, lengths, and grades that look striking and wear extremely well. These forests also pull carbon emissions from the atmosphere as they mature. “Each year, we grow more trees than we harvest,” says Jessica Hewitt of Humboldt Sawmill in California, a company that’s been practicing responsible redwood forestry, including wildlife habitat conservation, for more than a decade. From its famous brawn to its unmatched beauty, here are four qualities that make warm, inviting redwood the perfect material for your next project.

The Wonders of Sustainable Redwood Whether it’s used for landscaping structures or elaborate indoor projects, redwood exudes a certain permanence and grace.

LONGEVITY Redwood is long-lasting and weathers gorgeously. Left to its own devices, it acquires a rich texture and variegated patina that ensure a lifetime of curb appeal. HARMONY Nothing dissolves the indoor/outdoor line like redwood. For all its distinctive character, it still melds into the landscape, merging garden rooms and their picturesque surroundings.

RESILIENCE Redwood’s durability and ﬁre-resistant properties make it a go-to for hardworking outdoor structures—and its natural tannins, which resist decay and termites, beneﬁt gardens and landscaping projects.

This redwood structure designed by Orlando Soria provides a dining area off the kitchen and a hangout on the upper deck (top left).

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PHOTO: ZEKE RUELAS

STYLE Midcentury modernists were drawn to redwood’s deep color, immaculate grain, and long, straight boards, which line up extraordinarily well and make a striking statement, especially indoors.

renovation

TEXT BY

PHOTOS BY | @ROBERTRIEGER

Anna Dorothea Ker

Robert Rieger

Shifting Gears In Berlin, Studio Karhard transforms an auto repair shop into a high-performance home for a painter and her family.

When architects Thomas Karsten and Alexandra Erhard toured the raw industrial space, they were struck by how much light streamed in, a gift bestowed by large windows (inset) and the rare presence of a private patio (above). “The challenge was how to make the space feel comfortable without dividing it into small units,” says Karsten.

When artist Nata Lee Hahn approached Studio Karhard’s Alexandra Erhard and Thomas Karsten in 2018 to convert a former car repair shop into a studio space in Berlin’s bohemian Kreuzberg district, she was a self-described “single painter lady.” By the time work began a year later, the scope had grown to include living spaces. Not only had Nata Lee met her husbandto-be, Caspar, but he’d also managed to acquire the adjoining space—and the second of their two little ones was on the way. “We were like, ‘Ah, we’re going to need to

include a children’s room in there somewhere,’ ” Nata Lee laughs. Combined, the two spaces formed a rough L shape and spanned 3,013 square feet on the ground ﬂoor of a tucked-away courtyard building. It was decrepit—“a lot of humidity, wet bricks,” Karsten recalls. But the unvarnished potential captivated the imaginations of all involved, inspiring many a mood board in what would become a collaborative design process of “creative ping-pong,” as Nata Lee puts it. Its outcome is a ﬁne-tuned feat of

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Patera Oval

New Patera Oval By Øivind Slaatto Design to Shape Light louispoulsen.com

renovation

Loft in a Former Garage

LOCATION

Studio Karhard Berlin, Germany

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Entrance Living/Dining Area Bedroom Bathroom Sauna Kitchen/Captain’s Deck Patio Walk-in Closet Studio

ILLUSTRATION: LOHNES+WRIGHT

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“ The space was just empty and raw, and it gave us the opportunity to go wild. It was like a playground of ideas.”” NATA LEE HAHN, RESIDENT

An entrance hall leads to the living/dining area (opposite, top), where the architects used old bricks to make a fireplace, stairs, and built-in benches feel as though they were always there. The garage’s huge doors had been covered up (opposite,

contrasting proportions. From the building’s courtyard, an entrance fitted with tiles customized by Nata Lee gives way to an airy living/dining area leading to a sequence of cozier spaces: bedrooms, bathrooms, and a studio, as well as a private patio—a rare luxury in Berlin. Refining the space’s industrial rawness required installing an underfloor heating system and an acoustic ceiling—the kind of work Studio Karhard had perfected in renovating such local institutions as the notorious Berghain nightclub. A restrained material selection reflects the building’s former life. “It should still look a little bit

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inset), so Studio Karhard freed up the openings for steel-andglass doors from Ferrotec. Plan B carpenters built the floor-toceiling bookshelves as well as the cabinetry in the kitchen at the far end of the room (above). Overhead is a steel mezzanine

like a car workshop, but a comfortable one,” says Karsten. Old bricks from Poland offset the waxed concrete floors and form a fireplace in the living room and benches that flank the entry stairs. Above the kitchen at th e other end of the room, a hanging steel frame holds a gallery level where Caspar works. The family calls it the “captain’s deck.” Playful touches abound in the apartment, creating a mix of openness and intimacy. A “secret passageway” connects the parents’ dressing room and kids’ bedroom, outfitted with built-in furniture by local carpentry firm Plan B, and a dim

where Caspar works. The couple’s bedroom (opposite, below) faces the patio, which bathes the room in light. The adjoining bathroom (above left) gets indirect daylight via openings in the brick wall (left, inset) and a transom window.

corridor links the luminous living spaces to Nata Lee’s subdued studio. “It’s not just the light but the lack of light that plays a beautiful role,” she says. “My own little dark tunnel.” For every mood and time of day, there’s a fitting nook: A sauna exudes tranquility while the bath, backdropped by elegant dark tiles, leads to a guest room with a view of the building’s courtyard. It’s the space’s entertaining capabilities, though, that its residents most appreciate. Friends and extended family regularly drop by. As Nata Lee quips, “No more fixing cars here, but we can always fix up a drink.”

interiors

TEXT BY

PHOTOS BY | @ALANJENSEN

Liza Karsemeijer

Alan Jensen

Textile designer Milla Novo and her husband, Nigel Nowotarski, make their home in a former chapel, part of a converted monastery near Amsterdam. In a raised sitting area surrounded by arched windows, a pink couch by Be Pure Home matches a wall hanging made by Milla.

In a small town near Amsterdam, a couple turn the top of a former chapel into their home and studio.

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P R O M OT I O N

Household Politics Energy expert Saul Grifﬁth wants to electrify everything, starting at home.

ILLUSTRATION: PETER OUMANSKI

“The solution for climate stability is often “decarbonize the U.S. by electrifying everything,” we share some of the polymath’s inspirational perceived as complex, but it really comes down takes on climate repair and how we all can to personal choice,” says Mark Parsons, VP of participate. Read more at dwell.com/green renewable electricity provider Green Mountain mountainenergy. Energy. He points to the actions of concerned individuals as the key driver of an uptick in conTHE BOSS IS PLANET sumer demand for clean power sources like “We need solar incorporated into every design, wind, water, geothermal heat, and solar. and not just daylighting strategies, but a Parsons is not alone in this view. “We already general trend toward flatter roofs covered have the technology,” says energy scientist and with solar panels. But we won’t new-build our MacArthur “genius” grant winner Saul Griffith. way out of this problem. It’s about minimizing “The movement we need is every family retrofit costs.” —SG demanding that politicians enable this cleanDO THIS NOW energy future and that banks finance corporations to produce the required goods.” “Replace your fossil fuel–burning appliances— In advance of Griffith’s new book, Electrify gas heaters, stoves, cars, and lawn mowers— (MIT Press, Oct. 2021), which maps his plan to with electric ones when they are retired, and

update your breaker box to handle a much bigger load.” —SG GRID NEUTRALITY “Like the Internet, the grid needs to be a twoway street with simple rules: Anyone with clean power should be able to sell it to the grid; anyone with a battery should be able to connect.” —SG AWESOME FUTURE “There will be a day when the economics of a clean-energy future will ﬁnally shift for everyone because people will demand it. Those with improved lives, which will be all of us, won’t really care about the politics of it anymore.” —SG

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interiors

The pink sofa (above) is joined by a Driade Roly Poly lounge chair. “I just love the quirky design,” Milla says. She works on a new piece in her studio (above right). A spiral stair (right) leads up to the second level. During the renovation, workers uncovered frescoes painted on the walls, and the couple decided to leave portions of them uncovered.

St. Lucia Klooster DESIGNERS LOCATION

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Milla Novo and Nigel Nowotarski Bennebroek, The Netherlands

Entrance Powder Room Utility Room Studio

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Kitchen Dining Area Living Area Balcony

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Standard Studio

Laundry Bedroom Bathroom Guest Room

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Lower Level

ILLUSTRATION: LOHNES+WRIGHT

About 20 miles from Amsterdam, an old monastery stands amid a lively garden in the quiet town of Bennebroek. Franciscan sisters once lived in the imposing brick structure, built in the 19th century, but they departed late in the 20th, and a developer subsequently carved the bulk of the building into 18 apartments. That’s how Milla Novo and her husband, Nigel Nowotarski, came to live in the top of what was once a chapel. As you step into their apartment, large arched windows hint at its ecclesiastical past, but the couple’s eye-catching textiles and artworks—set against pristine white walls—make the biggest impression. Milla, who worked as a ﬂight attendant before reinventing herself as a designer four years ago, creates large macraméesque wall hangings that incorporate symbols of the Mapuche people in southcentral Chile, where her mother is from and still lives. Nigel works full-time in ﬁntech, but he has also produced large Pop art–style portraits (lately he’s been focusing his creative energies on assisting Milla with her endeavors). “We wanted to establish a balance between the original monastery building and a clean living space for displaying our art,” Milla says. When they bought the two-level, 2,100-square-foot space in 2018, it was raw, giving architect Wouter Slot and engineer Devin Wesselius of Standard Studio a blank canvas of their own. They worked with the couple to determine a

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“ I wanted everything to ﬂow: a staircase up, a staircase down, for example. You can walk in circles— there is no blockage. I found that very important.”

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MILLA NOVO, DESIGNER AND RESIDENT

Milla and Nigel thought the kitchen island (right) should anchor the first floor, and they wanted colors that matched the frescoes. Stone specialist Nick Blok found exactly what they were looking for: a monolithic piece of Italian quartzite with muted pinks and umbers in the veining. The couple’s cats— Chepe and Pacho—doze while Nigel works in another sitting area (below). The chairs are from HK Living.

layout: an open-plan lower floor with some seating areas—one raised, by the windows—and a studio for Milla organized around a central kitchen island and dining space. A steel spiral stair leads up to a bedroom, two bathrooms, an office, and another studio on the second floor. “I believe the energy in a house should flow,” Milla says. To that end, the main bathroom upstairs has two entrances, as does the balcony—on each side of the apartment—and there’s a second, ladder-like stair, so you can walk up one and down the other and trek outdoors and back if you feel like making a seamless circuit around the home. “Wherever we are in the house, we can surprise each other,” Milla adds. During the renovation, the builders discovered religious frescoes behind the white plaster walls, prompting Milla and Nigel to track down photos of the chapel and to piece together what must still be behind them. They decided to uncover the paintings, but—on the advice of their architects—only partially. “I told them, ‘Don’t forget it’s your house, not a monastery,’ ” says Slot. “ ‘Let’s not overdo it.’ ” One wall is now home to a group of angels and monks; the other features part of a castle. The rest of the works remain hidden. “We love how much personality this house has,” Milla says. “I know it sounds weird, but sometimes I think those angels are happy we set them free.”

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Suburban Experiment A two-unit accessory building behind a rental home in Los Angeles offers inspired spaces where tenants can get creative.

In March, one year after California’s stay-at-home order ﬁrst put a pause on live events, DJ Adam Cooper moved his show to the yard he shares with a small group of renters in Los Angeles’s El Sereno neighborhood. With a blue sky above and palms swaying in the background, he livestreamed a mix of Afro-Caribbean and amapiano tracks to his virtual audience. It was everything his landlord, architect Max Kuo, had hoped for when he transformed the rear structure of a rental property that he owns into a blank slate for future tenants’ personal and professional pursuits.

TEXT BY

Kelly Vencill Sanchez PHOTOS BY | @BRADTORCHIA

Brad Torchia

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(855) 886-4824 | Ŕrstrepublic.com | New York Stock Exchange symbol: FRC MEMBER FDIC AND EQUAL HOUSING LENDER

backyard house

“ The project was always concerned with the question: How do you create a living space for different tenants to come together?”” MAX KUO, ARCHITECT

The cofounder of AllThatIsSolid, a practice based in the Malaysian capital of Kuala Lumpur as well as in L.A., wanted to create a well-designed setting that would accommodate a mix of households sharing a single-family lot. “It looks like an ordinary home, but there are decisions here that are out of the ordinary,” Kuo says of the multiresidence property, which he worked with his team to renovate via WhatsApp while he was in Boston teaching at Harvard and MIT. The plaza-like area between the front house and the new accessory dwelling unit, for example, is ﬁnished with diagonal strips of concrete and decomposed granite—details Kuo says are intended to eliminate boundaries in the communal outdoor space. With a budget of roughly $538,000, the

AllThatIsSolid team converted the original back house and attached garage into a white-gabled duplex with a 900-squarefoot, two-bedroom apartment on the ground level and a 700-square-foot studio upstairs. While retaining the initial footprint, the architects nudged the structure’s square footage to fit the top unit by building a new roof that is pitched higher and also cantilevers over the front of the first floor. Both rentals have significant natural light, clean-lined cabinetry, black fixtures, and terrazzo tile. Adam and his partner, educator Brianna Swan, were taken with the downstairs unit when they first saw it last fall, but it was the soaking tub in the primary bathroom that really sealed the deal. The ample storage came in a close second. The couple

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Cronus House DESIGNER LOCATION

AllThatIsSolid Los Angeles, California

First Floor D

Second Floor

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Entrance Living Area Bathroom Bedroom Kitchen Atelier

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ILLUSTRATION: LOHNES+WRIGHT

turned a second bedroom into a workfrom-home space. Upstairs, the skylit studio provides the perfect live/work setup for photographer and producer Richie Davis. The unit, in addition to its garage-turned-entryway, has already served as the setting for a number of his shoots, including a recent Interview magazine spread on musician St. Vincent. “I play a lot with the light here,” Richie says. Kuo’s renovation has already left an impact on his tenants. “When a place is well designed, you don’t have to go overboard with decor,” says Adam. “Every element is so well thought out,” Brianna adds. “Going forward, it’s going to be really hard for us to live anywhere else.”

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outside

With the nearby coastal cliffs reflected in their sharp rooflines, a vacation home and guesthouse play on the gabled structures of Canada’s Magdalen Islands. Residents Vincent Morel and Jan-Nicolas Vanderveken adapted a local custom by installing recessed entrances to keep strong winds at bay.

A Cut Above On a windswept island in Quebec, la Shed Architecture slices into a traditional form to create a radically open retreat. TEXT BY

PHOTOS BY | @MAXIMEBROUILLET

Susan Nerberg

Maxime Brouillet

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“This home is the expression of our lifelong dream.” HUDSON VALLEY, NEW YORK

Dowling Studios for Lindal - 41622

OM Studio Design - 41664

Vandervort Architects for Lindal - 41388

Custom Homes Designed and Delivered Serving our clients since 1945. Contact your local Lindal representative at Lindal.com/dealers or contact natlsales@lindal.com l 800.508.1833

outside

Set in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, the Magdalen Islands are as far from terra ﬁrma as you can get within the province of Quebec. At their windswept shores, rolling meadows and sand dunes give way to red cliffs, which tumble like crinkled curtains to the sea. Time passes slowly on the archipelago, which is one of the reasons Vincent Morel and Jan-Nicolas Vanderveken built their vacation home there. Vincent, who spent childhood summers on the islands, knew this was a place where he could decompress, dive into the sea, and feel the sand under his feet. The couple purchased an empty plot on the western point of Havre Aubert Island, where the strong, constant wind means

there are few trees—all the better for savoring views. “We’re on top of a small hill,” says Jan-Nicolas. “From here, we can see three of the seven islands, and two other hills, each with a house.” To the west, there’s only the sea; the couple’s property is the last before the swell. La Shed designed Vincent and JanNicolas’s Montreal apartment years earlier, so they recommissioned the ﬁrm to create a winterized vacation home and a threeseason cabin for visiting friends. The main house and guest cabin riff on the islands’ traditional shingled houses, which have special vestibules—known locally as tambours—in front of their entrances to keep wind-borne dust from making it indoors.

The firm modeled the home’s interior after typical seaside houses, with a light palette meant to provide a canvas for dramatic plays of sunlight. The living room (below) holds a Mags Soft Low sofa from Hay, a Mara coffee table from Article, and a Jotul woodstove. The couple chose partially open shelving in the kitchen (opposite, top). “We’re not minimalists, and we wanted to display different objects we’ve collected,” Vincent says. The cabinetry, conceived as freestanding pieces of furniture, turned out even better than they had imagined.

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“ There’s a tradition on the islands to name things. These houses have already earned the nickname les pintes de lait—the milk cartons.” YANNICK LAURIN, ARCHITECT

But instead of adding these external foyers, la Shed opted for recessed entries that help break up the houses’ massings. “Playing with geometries, we came up with unique, asymmetrical shapes that are well anchored in the local context,” says architect Yannick Laurin. “They’re not too obvious, and they’re not copies.” The moment you enter the recessed loggia of the main house, the wind dies down. Step inside, and your feet land on another clever response to island life: a doormat sunken into the polished concrete ﬂoor to keep sand in one place. The powder room just off the hall has a shower for post-swim rinsing, and oversize windows frame views in every direction. “The Magdalen Islands are windy, and the summer season is short,” says Laurin. “With the expansive glazing, you can extend that season by bringing in views.” The owners’ favorite part of the house may well be the kitchen and dining area located just off the entrance. “We love to cook,” says Vincent, noting that the open space and ample countertops make it easy to do so while being surrounded by

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outside Vincent (left) and JanNicolas hang out on the main house’s terrace, where they can watch fishing boats catch lobster, halibut, and other sea creatures depending on the season. “We know where our food comes from,” says Jan-Nicolas with a smile.

Les Rochers ARCHITECT LOCATION

La Shed Architecture Magdalen Islands, Quebec

A Entrance B Bathroom C Office

D Living Room E Dining Area F Kitchen

G Laundry H Terrace I Bedroom

J Walk-in Closet

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Main House Lower Level

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ILLUSTRATION: LOHNES+WRIGHT

guests. On the other side of the house, the living room is “an intimate space,” says Jan-Nicolas. “It’s more about us, while the kitchen is about being with family and friends.” Upstairs, the architects created a mezzanine that overlooks the dining table below. This level holds the bedrooms, which lie behind large pocket doors. “When it’s only us around, we keep the doors open,” says Jan-Nicolas. “We wanted this ﬂow, like you have in a hotel suite, because we love to travel,” Vincent adds. It takes two hours to ﬂy from Montreal to the Magdalen Islands, where the couple have spent most of their time over the past year. While Vincent misses visiting museums and dining out, Jan-Nicolas says he now prefers to live here. “Everything is how and where it should be,” he says. “I would not change a thing.”

The Vision: Create an airy space intertwined with nature.

This reimagined lakeside getaway redefines “rustic” by blending natural and salvaged materials with large expanses of glass to create a boundless connection to nature. Kolbe’s VistaLuxe® Collection windows and doors gave all the options needed for clean lines, floor-to-ceiling views, daylight, and performance.

dwellings

YEAR-ROUND OASIS TEXT BY

PHOTOS BY | @NATMCCOMAS

Kate Hamilton

Natalie McComas

To his credit, the original owner and builder of an ’80s-era home in Byron Bay, Australia, kept it “in pretty good nick,” as designer Micka Etheridge puts it. “He’d dusted the window frames once a week for thirty-five years.” Etheridge took that same care expanding the house for its new owners, Cheryl and James Kitchener, who love its greenery and mellow, vintage vibe.

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An Australian renovation weaves together indoor spaces with lush gardens so there’s always room to roam—no matter what the weather brings.

It was Elsie, the goldendoodle, who started it. “We were living in a tiny house in the center of Byron Bay with two little children and Elsie in the middle of the wet season,” says Cheryl Kitchener. “We kept coming to the dog beach and driving past this house until, one day, we decided to take a look.” Cheryl, who works in tech, is perched on a banquette built cleverly into the narrow deck that skirts the home’s new northfacing wing, wide open to the winter sun.

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dwellings

A well-organized entryway (below) leads to a living room (left) that opens to gardens on two sides. A built-in counter by the kitchen acts as a workspace. Exposed beams, spotted gum walls and floors, and a gold Muse sofa by Sarah Ellison create an earthy, ’70s mood.

“ It’s got a richer material palette than other buildings in Byron Bay—but it’s not for everyone. It’s not so ‘safe.’ ” MICKA ETHERIDGE, DESIGNER

Her husband, James, sporting sunglasses, is making coffee. She watches their daughters, Indiana, seven, and Zalia, five, brave a dip in the pool while baby Ember sleeps. “We fell pregnant during the build, so there was definitely some urgency to the move,” says James with a laugh. The house, unimpressive from the street, was a 1980s brick-and-tile built by the original owner and seller one block back from Tallow Beach—a stretch of white sand to the south of boho mecca Byron Bay, Australia, where surfers share the long break with dolphins and migrating humpbacks. “It was just something different,” says James, a stay-at-home dad. Built around a central courtyard, the house was all about connection to the garden. “The old man who owned it had his chair set up in the living room and his goldfish pond out in the courtyard,” says Cheryl. “You could feel how he wanted all of the rooms opening

up to green space.” “And it felt private,” says James, “which is something we loved.” Developing this sense of privacy and indoor/outdoor connection was key to the renovation by designer and builder Micka Etheridge of Spacebuilt. He kept the structure’s original U-shaped ﬂoor plan, as well as its “classic early ’80s lines,” and added the long wing that houses the kitchen and a sunken lounge, with an emphasis on volume and light. Today, the 2,422-square-foot house resembles a lowercase “h,” with one side stretching back nearly to the end of the property. Between the parallel wings in front, now holding four bedrooms, a central living space is all sliding glass doors on two sides, enabling Cheryl and James to keep eyes on the kids, wherever they are. The material palette, both inside and out, is warm and inviting, with spotted gum walls and ﬂoors, custom cedar rib–clad

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A white onyx countertop extends from the kitchen island to create a breakfast bar, outfitted with Bobby stools by Daniel Tucker. “The floating benchtop is the most brilliant thing we’ve ever done, and we’ll never have a house without one again,” says Cheryl. Metallic accents like pendants from Lighting Collective and brass drawer handles complement rich wood finishes.

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joinery, and rough-cut stone in spades, all sourced through a local supplier. “Buildings have got to look great, but they’ve also got to perform well and feel good to live in,” says Etheridge. “We achieved that through natural light and a nice ﬂow of movement through the spaces.” Hidden from the street by a fence that runs the width of the property, the home evokes the feeling of a family compound. Established palms dapple shade over a series of outdoor “rooms” designed for different times of the day or year, including whimsical play areas, a bathing grotto with a pink terrazzo tub and an outdoor shower, and a poolside ﬁrepit. “Creating distinct spaces was the aim of

the build,” says James, who’s no stranger to inventive home setups: He recalls living with Cheryl in the back of their car in a caravan park on Tallow Beach when they arrived in Byron Bay a decade ago. “When we’re entertaining, the kids will play out front, and we’ll set up rugs on the grass where it’s sheltered from the wind.” The late summer wet season no longer spells cabin fever. “I think some of my favorite times in the house are when the storms come through,” says James. “Being able to sit in the lounge with the ﬁreplace on and watch the rain coming down all around you: It’s magic.” For her part, Cheryl appreciates how the interior’s warm materials pair with the

The kitchen and dining space lead to a sunken lounge (above) anchored by a fireplace built with stone from Sydney-based provider Eco Outdoor. Art by Bobby Clark hangs above a sofa from HK Living accented with pillows from Città.

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“ Watching the sunrise and moonrise from the living room is gobsmacking.” JAMES KITCHENER, RESIDENT

In the couple’s bedroom (right), mirrored cabinets bounce light back toward an office nook. A locally made plywood bed frame with built-in drawers rests under Sheet Society linens and a Città throw. The rug is from Armadillo.

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A neutral rug from Nikau ties the pieces together. In one of several distinct outdoor spaces, a pink terrazzo tub (opposite) creates an oasis under the palms.

Artwork by Octavia Tomyn adorns the living room (left), where Huggy fauxshearling chairs flank a Chub coffee table, both designed by Sarah Ellison.

house’s sense of openness. “Having grown up in Canada, I love dark timber and paneling and timber beams,” she says. “But I love how Australia brings the outdoors in. We really wanted to combine those two inﬂuences to make it feel cozy and warm but also airy and bright.” It was a challenge that Etheridge was more than up for. “In Byron, there’s a lot of rolling the turd in tinsel,” he says. “I like building for legacy. The reason this house looks so good is that it makes use of beautiful materials that have been beautifully ﬁnished. It’s like a doctor’s or judge’s house of a bygone era—quality is oozing out of every corner of the place.” Etheridge is just one of dozens of local creatives whose work is celebrated in this unique family home. “A lot of what you see in this house is handmade,” says Cheryl. “From the doors down to the brass handles. Even our beds and our tables are made by locals, and most of the furnishings are by Byron Bay designers—the couches, the lighting, the art.” “It’s a pretty quintessential Byron home,” says Etheridge. “It’s got its own heartbeat—bold, progressive, and full of design. I think it sings true.”

Byron Courtyard House DESIGNER LOCATION

Spacebuilt Suffolk Park, New South Wales, Australia

Entrance Laundry Kitchen Dining Area Living Area Deck Bedroom Bathroom Storage Outdoor Bath Cubby House Parking ILLUSTRATION: LOHNES+WRIGHT

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A perfume magnate falls for a 1960s house—with a murky provenance—outside Paris. 78

Giant curved concrete windows are a telling detail in the supposed history of a home in the French countryside. Owner Marc Chaya tapped architect Julien Pilon to revamp the interior of the striking home. A glass-brick skylight (opposite, top) brightens the main bathroom.

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TEXT BY

PHOTOS BY | @LAHAUSER

Catherine Bolgar

Alejandra Hauser

An Orphaned Masterpiece

Half an hour from Paris, Marc Chaya’s house in Chailly-en-Bière is a world away. Its clean white curves and corners seem to float in a flat wooded park on the edge of the vast Fontainebleau forest. It gleams placidly, a world away, too, from the plowed-over fields down the road, where a few remnant heads of lettuce lie forlornly, like guillotined kings. It also bears no resemblance whatsoever to its neighbors, French McMansions of the faux-Norman style. The 3,068-square-foot home, with its windows framed in curving concrete,

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has more in common with Terminal 2 at Charles de Gaulle Airport. Indeed, some say the house is an early work of architect Paul Andreu, who oversaw the airport’s master plan and designed several concourses there, as well as the National Center for the Performing Arts in Beijing, numerous museums, and other major works around the world. The previous owners told Marc that Andreu and a friend designed the residence for the friend’s family when they were students at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris in the late 1960s. But after the original owners chopped up the interior into small rooms and long, dark hallways, Andreu refused to acknowledge any role in its creation. The architect died in 2018, and his ofﬁce says the story is pure ﬁction—fabricated to sell real estate. But if its paternity is uncertain, one thing is not: “The house was like a labyrinth,” says Marc, who bought it in 2017. He asked Andreu to renovate it, but the architect declined, and Marc instead turned to Julien Pilon, at the time an architect with Forall Studio in Paris. Marc and Pilon had previously worked together on retail concepts for Maison Francis Kurkdjian, the perfume house Marc created with Kurkdjian and which is now part of LVMH. (The house’s credits include Baccarat Rouge 540,

Ribbed detailing adds texture to the painted concrete facade (above). In the living room (right), a Stricto Sensu sofa by Didier Gomez and a Prado daybed by Christian Werner, both from Cinna, join a marble-topped coffee table by Florence Knoll. The red easy chair and ottoman are from the Platner Collection by Knoll, and the black Potence wall lamp is by Jean Prouvé. The tiles on the floor and above the fireplace are from Living Ceramics.

The large central corridor is a soothing study in black and white (left). A graphite drawing on canvas by German artist Peppi Bottrop hangs near a stool from La Redoute. The 18thcentury wood male and female statues were purchased by Marc in Jaipur, India.

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“ The details on the exterior are like louver shutters. They create a pattern that contrasts with the rounded shape of the windows.”” JULIEN PILON, RENOVATION ARCHITECT

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A glimpse into Marc’s bedroom (opposite) shows a pop of red from a Verner Panton Series 430 chair. The color is repeated in the main floor’s guest bathroom, adding an unexpected twist to basic white tiles. “Everyone has black or white grout,” says Marc, “but red is different and goes with the ’60s theme of the house.”

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Marc prepares a snack in the hardworking kitchen (above), where the countertops are made of Silestone for easy maintenance. “I love to cook and have friends over,” he says. “I wanted a heavy-duty house that’s functional and durable.” The dining area (left) features a trio of PH5 pendants by Louis Poulsen, a Cross oak table by Matthew Hilton, and Wishbone CH24 chairs by Hans Wegner for Carl Hansen & Søn.

among other well-known scents.) Marc praises Pilon for working so collaboratively on the renovation. “Julien listens, and he makes your wish come true,” he says. That’s one way of saying that Marc—who began looking at architectural magazines while growing up in Beirut— both knows what he wants and is willing to wait, sometimes years, to get it. He points to an original Parentesi, a lamp by Achille Castiglioni, which has pride of place in his living room: “I’ve wanted one since I was a kid,” he says. He notes the same of the dining room’s Wishbone Chairs by Hans Wegner. He knew this was his dream house when he ﬁrst saw an ad for it in January 2016, but he was on vacation in Cambodia and had to let it drop. More than a year later, he saw another ad. This time he bought it.

The sculptural house, which consists of a main floor and a basement level, is a boxy volume that recalls a casual California modernism by way of continental brutalism. Between large windows and glass walls, the house is nearly transparent on all sides—“like a dollhouse,” Marc says— all the more so because Pilon erased the extraneous walls that had allegedly offended Andreu. “We removed everything that was not structural to free the circulation, to rethink the way you move through the house,” Pilon says. It’s filled with Marc’s art collection, and the distribution of photographs, paintings, lithographs, and sculpture is now the best indicator of any prescribed path through the space. The main level has a meandering floor plan, with the living room bleeding into Marc’s office—or not. The office, and

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In the office, a Reale table by Carlo Mollino and a Conference chair by Eero Saarinen for Knoll look out on the gardens. The lamp is from Le Bon Marché. On the wall is a photograph by Dutch artist Barry Marré, and below it is a custom oak heater cover designed by Pilon.

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House in Chailly

Julien Pilon Chailly-en-Bière, France

RENOVATION ARCHITECT LOCATION

Main Floor

Basement A L

N H

J A

H H G

I P

A B C D E F G H

Terrace Entrance Kitchen Dining Area Pergola Living Room Office Bathroom

I J K L M N O P

Bedroom Powder Room Corridor Utility Closet Laundry Mechanical Room TV Room Pool House

In the basement, porthole windows (above) look out on the pool area, which is below grade. A pergola on the western side of the house (left) offers a shaded place for outdoor entertaining.

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ILLUSTRATION: LOHNES+WRIGHT

attached primary suite, can also be closed off by pulling shut a pocket door. Other doors are similarly hidden, even some that are extra wide, allowing the space to be reconﬁgured easily or left relatively loose. Although Marc works in perfume, he doesn’t intentionally scent his home. The subtle notes of mandarin, iris, wood, and vanilla that wafted through the house on a recent visit are from the perfumes he wears—from Maison Francis Kurkdjian, of course—a wardrobe of scents that he selects based on his mood. His choice this day enhances the home’s breezy affect, and appropriately, he says it was the house’s kinship with 1960s West Coast modernism that made it so appealing. “I call the house Chailly en Spring because it reminds me of Palm Springs,” Marc says. “I always wanted a house there, but I ended up with a Palm Springs house in Chailly.”

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dwellings Just inside the living room’s sliding glass door is a Parentesi lamp by Achille Castiglioni, an object Marc has admired since childhood. The interior design was motivated in part by the large, prominent windows: “The furniture also takes into account how it is seen from the outside,” says Marc.

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A New England architect and his wife downsize to a slim home that emphasizes connecting with the outdoors and aging in place.

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dwellings TEXT BY

PHOTOS BY | @_TONYLUONG

Marni Elyse Katz

Tony Luong

Natural Fit

Kyu Sung Woo sits in front of a model of the three homes he and his wife have occupied in Cambridge, Massachusetts: the historic house they bought in

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1978, the larger home he designed behind it in 1989, and the scaleddown structure he recently completed next door to meet the needs of the couple’s later years.

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Architect Kyu Sung Woo’s new home is not the only contemporary dwelling on the leafy Cambridge, Massachusetts, street where Colonials mingle with Victorians. It’s not even the only one Kyu Sung designed. There’s also the daringfor-its-time Harvard University faculty compound from the mid-1980s and the brazen, postmodern house the Seoulborn architect built for his family in 1989. Fifteen years after moving in, Kyu Sung and his wife, concert pianist Jung-Ja Kim, acquired the lot next door. They expanded their garden but otherwise left the property alone for 10 years, pondering what would come next. In 2014, the couple decided to downsize and create a new, smaller home on that lot just for themselves. And although both

are highly mobile and neither is retired, they also wanted to address accessibility concerns, which they did by incorporating an elevator, for example. “This is a house for senior life,” says the architect, who turned 80 this year. The 3,687-square-foot house, named House II and completed in 2019, has a slim profile, full-height glass walls, and an angular roof that references the sloping site. While the design of the first house, which was inspired by Korean courtyard homes, was about retreating to defined interior spaces, the design of the new one is about forging connections within a flexible interior as well as with the landscape and the city beyond it. “In a sense, House I was introverted and House II is extroverted,” Kyu Sung says.

A few key features express Kyu Sung’s vision of flexible connectivity. Large floorto-ceiling doors that slide or swing open allow the couple to expand spaces or close them off for separation. The first-floor living area, for instance, opens on two sides to the deck, and a giant pocket door can expose the kitchen. On the second floor, two en suite bedrooms and Jung-Ja’s practice room fan out around the staircase, elevator, and landing. In the basement, triangular light wells that cut through the building brighten Kyu Sung’s studio and grant another type of connection: “It’s nice to be able to shout and hear each other,” Kyu Sung says, noting it was a challenge to even find each other in the other house, which was more than 5,000 square feet. Still owned by

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Kyu Sung’s wife, Jung-Ja Kim, a concert pianist and professor at the Boston Conservatory at Berklee, stands at the Coriantopped kitchen island (left). The Adelaide swivel chairs at one end (above) are from BoConcept. In the dining area (right), a 96-inch Run table from Emeco is lined with 611 chairs from Artek. Cielo pendants by Pablo Designs hang overhead. Cantilevered above the entrance, the home’s second floor features a large corner window (below). “I made the window big because I was thinking about looking out of it,” says Kyu Sung. “You can see the streets and parking and know you’re living in a city. That ability to relate to the outside world is important as you age.”

“When you build a house next to where you’re living and look at it all the time, it’s a different process. It’s unusual for an architect to watch the site every day.” KYU SUNG WOO, ARCHITECT AND RESIDENT

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Shallow shelves in Jung-Ja’s practice room (opposite) accommodate her many music books. A sliding door in the couple’s bedroom (above) is one of several in the home, allowing for easy transitions from privacy to openness. “This house is a connected house,

much more so than the first one,” says Kyu Sung. A twin bed that he designed anchors a flex room (right) on the second floor. In the living area (below), a Neo sectional by Niels Bendtsen for Bensen joins a pair of About A Lounge 81 swivel chairs by Hee Welling for Hay.

the Woos, House I is currently being rented to a foundation. House II’s pared-down aesthetic contributes to a sense of well-being. White ash floors, stairs, and wall panels, plus bands of glass and angled planes washed with sun from skylights, create a cocoon-like atmosphere. One feels good in this house— embraced, supported, soothed. However, when Kyu Sung speaks of the home, he emphasizes the benefits derived beyond its walls. “I learned from my mother that connecting to the outside world is very important in older age,” he says. “When you’re younger, you have a family. Later you need to connect to the city and nature.” While second-floor windows offer views of the neighborhood and the city beyond, Kyu Sung asked his friend and frequent collaborator, landscape architect Michael Van Valkenburgh, to design a garden for connecting with nature. The pair have been working together for 30 years on such projects as House I and the awardwinning Harvard graduate housing complex at 10 Akron Street. Both cite their strong sense of the other’s aesthetics as facilitating a working relationship that requires minimal back-and-forth. Van Valkenburgh designed a garden that is essentially a single path surrounding the L-shaped ipe deck that runs along the east side of the house and then wraps around the back. Kyu Sung thinks of the deck as “the mediator between the building and the landscape,” a concept he explored when he designed a retreat in Vermont for his family in 2008. The garden is also meant to encourage short strolls, especially for Jung-Ja, who spends hours a day at the piano.

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“ I like open-ended, lively landscapes that are incomplete and unresolved. They let you have your own reaction and interpretation.” MICHAEL VAN VALKENBURGH, LANDSCAPE ARCHITECT

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Gently graded steps covered in pine needles wander through the home’s L-shaped garden, designed by landscape architect Michael Van Valkenburgh. The verdant enclave provides both moments for pausing and an invitation to stroll. “As we designed, we thought of the landscape as a picture and a place you move through,” says Van Valkenburgh.

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Kyu Sung and Jung-Ja take in the view from the rear deck (left). Behind them is the house Kyu Sung designed for the couple and their children in 1989. A six-foot-tall wooden fence (opposite) shields the garden from the street, adding to the feeling of refuge. More than 60 plant species were used in the layered design. “The idea behind the garden is the opposite of minimalism,” says Van Valkenburgh. “It’s about complexity and a range of experiences and shifts. These are what make it absorbing.”

Rather than taking a minimalist approach, Van Valkenburgh devised a complex range of ever-changing episodes. More than 60 plant species bloom sequentially, revealing new color combinations every three months. “The experience of moving through the garden is cinematic,” he says. The terrain feels as dynamic as the foliage, thanks to ground surfaces that unfold into each other. At the start of the path, tightly organized bricks soon dissolve into a scattered arrangement, the hard material transitioning to decomposed granite. The bricks come together again at the top of six steps blanketed in pine needles and land on a raw schist slab hugged by ferns. Eleven more pine needle–strewn steps descend to the back garden, where the bricks trail lazily around a center swale studded with an early-blooming yellow magnolia tree. Following the trail feels like taking a contemplative journey. When presented with this idea, Van Valkenburgh says, “ ‘Journey’ might be too grand a word—more like a soulful breath.” The garden, the couple agree, is the essence of House II. The building’s synchronicity with the landscape exponentially enhances the design. “The changing scenery of the garden, with its lush leaves and new ﬂowers, provides a backdrop for our daily lives,” Kyu Sung says. “It is a reinvigorating experience.”

House II ARCHITECT LOCATION

A B C D

N Kyu Sung Woo Architects Cambridge, Massachusetts

Studio Elevator Bedroom Bathroom

E F G H

Light Well Deck Living Area Dining Area

I J K L

Kitchen Powder Room Entrance Walk-in Closet

E A

M Practice Room N Flex Room

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H E

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Basement

First Floor

Second Floor

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where we live now

TEXT BY

PHOTOS BY | @BENJAMINRAS

Mandi Keighran

Benjamin Rasmussen

Cultivating Community A home in a neighborhood built for people who formerly lacked housing serves as a prototype for the nonproﬁt development’s next phase. Phase One of the Community First! Village began in 2014 and resulted in a 27-acre development with 235 homes for people who formerly lacked housing, including one for Jesse Brown (above). Phase Two, currently underway, will culminate with 310 additional homes built on another 24 acres.

Just outside East Austin lies the Community First! Village, a 51-acre development of micro-homes and RVs that offers affordable, permanent shelter to individuals who have lacked housing for extended periods. Many of the dwellings in the privately funded community, which is run by Texas nonproﬁt Mobile Loaves & Fishes, were designed by local architects in collaboration with the residents. One such tenant is Jesse Brown, who spent 30 years without a home until he moved into a micro-house built as part of the ambitious project’s ﬁrst phase. Before moving in, “I lived in a tent behind a sign shop,” Jesse says. In 2015, the store owner showed Jesse a brochure for the Community First! Village, but he “wasn’t ready to move yet,” Jesse says. After his camp was raided by police in 2018, Jesse toured the village with the shop owner. He became a resident three months later.

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Jesse’s House ARCHITECT LOCATION

A B C D E F

Jobe Corral Architects Austin, Texas

Porch Entrance Living Room Bedroom Storage Kitchenette

“ Jesse really loves his chair. It’s a place where he can look out to the porch through the open door and see all his neighbors go by.”

“The bedroom [above right] is in the southwest corner, where the home gets the most sun,” says Ada Corral, cofounder of Jobe Corral Architects. “It’s also the place where we wanted more of that sheltered, cozy feeling.” The architects incorporated furniture to separate the bedroom from the living area (above left).

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Last year, Jesse applied to become a Seed Neighbor for the project. The role involves welcoming new residents into the community and giving feedback for the project’s second phase, which is in the midst of adding 310 new homes to the village—including the modest blue pitched-roof cabin completed specifically for Jesse last August. “I chose the color of the house,” Jesse says. “I figured if it’s going to be my home for the rest of my life, I should make it the way I want it, and blue is my favorite color.” Jobe Corral Architects, an Austin-based firm, worked with Jesse to design the home. “We do a lot of residential work,” says cofounder Camille Jobe. “We always

think about what parts of the house tell the story about who is living in it.” “We realized that some of our assumptions about what makes a home were completely different for Jesse,” adds cofounder Ada Corral. “Permanence was one of his biggest concerns, and relaxation was also very important.” At the entrance, a welcoming orange door leads into the living space, where a reclining chair is positioned so Jesse can look through the screened porch and interact with his neighbors—something he insisted on when developing the brief with the architects. It was also important to Jesse that the home provide a refuge.

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Last year, Jesse was dubbed King of the Market for his role greeting residents, volunteers, and visitors at the on-site gift shop (above), which sells goods made by community members. Jesse does groundskeeping (left) through one of the village’s Community Works programs, which provide opportunities for tenants to earn income.

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This is reflected through the more private sleeping space at the rear of the house, which is separated from the living area by built-in shelves where Jesse can display his belongings. A small kitchenette runs along one side of the home. While Jobe Corral Architects designed the dwelling specifically for Jesse, the firm plans further iterations for other residents. The architects chose a palette of durable, off-the-shelf materials—Hardie board, concrete, and plywood—to make construction and future maintenance straightforward. “All of my life, I’ve never been part of things,” Jesse says. “Here, I’m part of a community. If something happens to me, I know that somebody’s going to care.”

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budget breakdown TEXT BY

PHOTOS BY | @GRANTHARDER

Stacey McLachlan

Grant Harder

Waste Not, Want Not Thanks to their savvy with salvaged materials, two DIYers erect a micro-cabin in the Canadian Rockies for next to nothing.

Nathalie and Greg Kupfer used salvaged and gifted materials to construct a tiny cabin in Alberta, Canada. They spent $2,109 on the build and recouped $2,087 by selling items they had obtained by bartering.

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Nathalie Kupfer will tell you proudly: She is not beyond dumpster diving. Steel doors rescued from a condo renovation; perfectly preserved plywood discarded by a soap warehouse undergoing expansion; cork ﬂooring donated by a neighbor. Nathalie (a retired industrial designer) and her husband, Greg (a former paramedic), are longtime DIY builders, and they see opportunity, not waste, when they bike past a renovation in action in

Canmore, their southern Alberta ski town. Last year the couple’s mental wheels started turning when one friend offered them a derelict garden shed and another provided a little spot of land on his ranch in the Canadian Rockies. What if they built an all-season, off-grid micro-cabin? What if it was made from as many salvaged and repurposed materials as possible? For two seasoned DIYers, the self-imposed challenge was too enticing to ignore.

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budget breakdown

1. GABION WALL

“Materials came from everywhere,” says Nathalie. “We built a great gabion wall behind our fireplace. The gravel came from our front driveway. My husband hated it, so we raked it up, took it down, and put it into the wall.” 2. WOODSTOVE

Their rancher friend donated a small Woodsman stove, although it didn’t hold heat—so the couple lined the interior with fire bricks, and Greg built a new door. The couple also installed a $63 steel hearth plate to create a baffle.

3. FLOORS

Cork flooring gives the cabin’s lower and upper levels an easy feel underfoot. Greg and Nathalie supplemented the material, a gift from their neighbor, with leftovers from previous projects.

3 4. SOFA

The couple built the seven-by-seven-foot corner sofa using three-quarter-inch plywood. For the upholstery, they spent $22 on secondhand padding, $15 on zippers, and $27 for a drop cloth from Chicago Canvas & Supply.

“ We have no cell service, no Internet, and no phone— the lights are powered by the sun, the water comes from the sky, and it’s just wonderful.”” NATHALIE KUPFER, DESIGNER AND RESIDENT 106

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The living area (opposite and above left) is furnished with a Gladom side table, a throw pillow, and cushions—all from Ikea. At night, the loft ladder leans over the sofa, secured with a bungee cord; during the day, it props up beside

the fireplace. The cabin has abundant storage (above), although there isn’t much to store. “You’re certainly not going anywhere when you’re there,” says Nathalie. “It’s all work clothes or warm clothes or ranch clothes, you

know?” The semienclosed kitchen (above right) has a barbecue and a two-burner propane stove from Coleman. Nathalie and Greg perch on the front steps on a sunny summer day (below).

“A neighbor once said to us, ‘You have too many ideas.’ But we can’t help ourselves!” says Nathalie with a laugh. The finished product is a snug, solarpowered, 97-square-foot retreat that cost the couple a grand total of $2,109— although they did splash out another $20 to complete an accompanying outhouse. But they got back almost all of their outlay by selling off unneeded items they’d acquired through bartering. To have a project like this during the Covid-19 lockdowns was a welcome distraction. “In Canmore, there are a lot of affluent people, and they’re always renovating and throwing out incredibly good materials,” says Nathalie. The couple spent six weeks collecting castoffs, and they camped out under the pines as they assembled the tiny home over the course of the summer. Their demolition squad consisted of neighborhood kids. “We had a three-year-old Superman pulling out nails,” Nathalie recalls. Another neighbor offered her own about-to-be-torn-down shed to mine for materials: some pristine windows and insulation. Repurposed steel became the siding, and they filled a gabion wall behind the woodstove with gravel from their home driveway. By early September, they were sleeping in the newly completed loft. Despite its small footprint, the cabin somehow feels, as Nathalie puts it,

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budget breakdown

Rocky Mountain Micro-Cabin DESIGNER LOCATION

Nathalie Kupfer Southwestern Alberta, Canada

A Porch B Kitchen C Entrance

D Living Area E Sleeping Loft

B D

Ground Floor

Loft

The tiny cabin currently sits on a friend’s property, but it’s designed to be mobile, should the couple need to move it. “It can be dragged away with nothing more than a tractor,” says Nathalie.

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“palatial.” Part of the majesty of this tiny home comes from its vaulted 14-foot ceiling, while a built-in corner sofa maximizes space on the lower ﬂoor. The trimless, oversize windows don’t hurt the feel, either. “It almost looks like there are holes in the house, like, ‘Oh, I forgot to put windows in,’ ” she says. Although Nathalie and Greg live as simply as possible when they’re at the cabin, the possessions they do have stow away neatly in a built-in storage unit cobbled

together from Ikea bookshelves and kitchen cabinets. The wood-burning stove and solar-powered lighting keep the place cozy at night. On the semi-enclosed porch, a two-burner camp stove and barbecue do the trick for meals nicely. They’re still tinkering and tweaking— is a DIY project ever truly done?—but Nathalie has that familiar spark in her eye again. “I already have six windows collected for the next one,” she says with a grin. “Perhaps on the coast next time?”

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stillwater-dwellings.com info@stillwaterdwellings.com 800.691.7302

modern market

Kalamazoo The Shokunin Kamado Grill

Sonoma Forge Design Faucets and Showers The Brut Collection pays homage to our surroundings here in Sonoma Valley and the familiar scenes of laboring in the vineyards and wineries, followed at the end of the day with a rewarding glass of sparkling wine. The lines of the Brut Faucet, shown here in Matte Black, soften the rough edges of raw plumbing parts with elegance and ease. The simple, artisan design is enhanced here by our Waterfall spout. Also available with Elbow or Cap spout. Complete your bath suite with coordinated accessories. Visit our website to see kitchen models, finish options and stunning exposed showers. Forged in America. www.sonomaforge.com

Kalamazoo introduces a strong modern design perspective to the Kamado category. The Shokunin Kamado Grill is taller, so it’s more versatile—fire can be built further below the food, on the lowest of three levels. The insulation has been dialed up, cross-flow ventilation redesigned, and multizone cooking made easier. The construction is masterful: built with incredible precision and attention to detail. kalamazoogourmet.com

Spore Big Ring door chime - Old school sound, modern finishes - Compatible with video doorbell systems - Available in White, Black, Tangerine, or Brushed steel - 6” diameter sporedoorbells.com Made in USA

Giossi & Kuhn Custom, handcrafted furniture and interiors. Blending traditional Danish design sensibility with the structural integrity of Japanese inspired joinery. giossiandkuhn.com

Ed Schlotzhauer Be Different Ed has a passion for discovering beauty and interest in unexpected places. Come share the journey. Limited-edition prints. Discover more at photos.schlotzcreate.com info@schlotzcreate.com

Shelfology Tromso Floating Shelves

Otrio Inventor’s Edition Enjoy Sweden and Finland’s Family Game of the Year. Now available in four high quality finishes. Concrete | Walnut | Rubberwood | Bamboo otrio.com

Yo, dudes & dudettes! Put your designer mojo in high gear with Tromso, the thinnest, strongest, made-to-measure, solid steel floating shelf within this earthly planisphere. Get 40+ radical finishes to mix, match, and Reclaim Your Walls™. With 90 lbs per linear ft of holding power and super sexy lines, your designs are guaranteed to add megajoules of rad to any space. The crazier the better. Impress your posse, live in the now! Use SHELFMOJO and get 10% off your order. Shelf geeks standing by: shelfology.com hello@shelfology.com 949.244.1083

basal pronounced: bāzəl defined: forming the bottom layer or base Modern furniture is often made with an aesthetics-first, longevity-second approach. This mindset produces ephemeral goods destined to end up in landfills.

emuliving Rio R50 Rocking Lounge Chair

At Basal, we design differently. Founded by a designer with over 30 years of experience creating outdoor furnishings and lighting for high-end commercial projects, Basal’s work emphasizes beauty and durability in equal measures.

EMU has created some of the world’s finest Italian-made outdoor furniture for your modern home.

Basal’s furniture is crafted to last a lifetime.

emuliving.com | 800.726.0368 us.info@emuliving.com

www.basal.life

modern market

Doorbird Answer your door anywhere DoorBird combines architectural-grade design with the most innovative IP technology available today. With DoorBird you never miss a visitor even when you are not at home. See your visitors, talk to them and open the door via your smartphone or tablet – from anywhere in the world. All products are designed, developed and produced in Berlin, Germany. www.doorbird.com

Alexandra Rose While I Sleep (detail) / 48” x 60” paintings in oil, acrylic, ink on canvas Los Angeles, California Commissions upon request alexandraroseart.com

Modern-Shed Space for what you need. Style for how you live. Modern-Shed offers personalized solutions for a home office, art or music studio, guest suite, man-cave/she-shed, and more. Download our catalog to see how the original Modern-Shed can work for you.

modern-shed.com Tel. 800-261-7282

Box Design USA Create curb appeal for your home or office! We have a wide range of letterbox solutions to fit your style. We are the North American distributor for these oneof-kind New Zealand designed mailboxes. We ship throughout the US and Canada. Order online @ www.fos-design.com customerservice@fos-design.com

Concrete Wall Finish Contemporary wall coating made Easy Bold and beautiful, loft original concrete is available in a variety of colors and styles. Water-based and eco-friendly, the superb quality and easy application process of our concrete looking coating make it a snap to achieve exactly the look and feel you want. Curious to know more? Come discover all our coating styles on our online boutique and get started!

LéAna Clifton “Color, Light & Time”

concretewallfinish.com

LéAna Clifton is a Marfa based artist with a passion for large fields of color punctuated by bold line work. Editions and original works based on speeding trains in the West Texas desert. LC@leanaclifton.com | @leanacliftonart

Contact Our Advertisers Concrete Orbis Candles + Vessels Household by KONZUK The Orbis candle’s illuminated wafer-thin raw edge and pitted geometric form inspire meditative calm, radiating hope and renewal. Once the soy wax burns out, the vessel’s shelf life is extended into an active setting for a succulent, tealight holder, or for storing precious keepsakes XL (5in.) Black Concrete Candle Available in 5 colors and scents

View Collection: konzuk.com

Concrete Wall Finish Contemporary wall coating made Easy Modern and beautifully textured, our loft raw concrete will completely change your decor! Water-based and ecofriendly, the superb quality and easy application process of our concrete looking coating make it a snap to achieve exactly the look and feel you want.

When contacting our advertisers, please be sure to mention that you saw their ads in Dwell. Avocado Mattress avocadogreenmattress.com/

Hunter Douglas hunterdouglas.com/

Basil Hayden basilhaydens.com/

JGeiger jgeigershading.com

Benjamin Moore benjaminmoore.com/en-us

Kolbe Windows & Doors kolbewindows.com

Bosch bosch-home.com/us/

Level Home level.co/

Carl Hansen & Son carlhansen.com/en

LifeStraw lifestraw.com/

Cherner Chair chernerchair.com

Lindal Cedar Homes lindal.com

Circa Lighting circalighting.com

Louis Poulsen louispoulsen.com

Concrete Collaborative concrete-collaborative.com/

Lumacast lumacast.com/

Corcoran corcoran.com

NanaWall nanawall.com

CP Supply cpsupply.us

Paloform paloform.com/

emuamericas emuamericas.com/

Rabbit Air rabbitair.com

First Republic Bank firstrepublic.com/

Space Theory spacetheory.com

Green Mountain Energy greenmountainenergy.com

Stillwater Dwellings stillwaterdwellings.com

Henrybuilt henrybuilt.com

Turkel Design turkeldesign.com

Hive hivemodern.com

Viewrail viewrail.com

House of Rohl houseofrohl.com

Western Red Cedar realcedar.com

Humboldt getredwood.com

Western Window Systems westernwindowsystems.com

Curious to know more? Come discover all our coating styles on our online boutique and get started!

concretewallfinish.com

If you are interested in joining Modern Market please contact: sales@dwell.com

TedStuff

cold hill studio

Hilary Pfeifer

A midcentury modern inspired locking mailbox. Available in black or white outer shell, and your choice of several door colors to complement your modern home.

handmade modern housewares, designed + crafted in new england, from sustainable materials. pictured: ellipse napkin rings made from reclaimed wood + 100% hemp napkins.

Mid-century-inspired sculptures integrating laser cut metal, reclaimed wood, colored pencils. Other works include mobiles, vinyl collage and modernist nativity scenes.

TedStuff.net

coldhillstudio.com

The RetroBox Wall Mounted Mailbox

hilarypfeifer.com

Coming Fall 2021... A collaboration with Bosch NanaWall Western Red Cedar

Watch for updates at Dwell.com.

sourcing The products, furniture, architects, designers, and builders featured in this issue.

Construction by Concor concor.co.za Landscape design by James Barry Slabbert instagram.com/ _james_barry_ Lighting design by August de Wet studioaugust.com Interior design by Lezanne Viviers and Walter Anderson viviersstudio.com 28–29 Vintage table by Kartell kartell.com; ceramics from Artisafire instagram.com/ artisafire_npo and Marlene Steyn marlenesteyn.tumblr.com 52 Shifting Gears Studio Karhard karhard.de Cabinetry by Plan B planb-berlin.de Metalwork by Ferrotec ferrotec-berlin.de 54 Brickwork by BEAG beag-bau.de; artwork by Nata Lee Hahn nataleehahn.com; beton cire by Schickwohnen schickwohnen.de 56 Just Like Heaven Standard Studio standardstudio.nl 56 Sofa by Be Pure Home bepurehome.com; Roly Poly chair by Driade driade.com; Kabin vase from 101 Copenhagen 101cph.com; wall hanging by Milla Novo millanovo.com; 59 Quartzite island by Nick Blok nickblok .com; faucet by Quooker quooker.nl; oven and stove top by Siemens siemenshome.bsh-group.com; lounge chairs from HK Living hkliving.nl; pillows from Ferm Living fermliving.us; pouf from Sofacompany sofacompany.com; vases from 101 Copenhagen 101cph.com

Year-Round Oasis

60 Suburban Experiment AllThatIsSolid allthatissolid.net Snow Construction snowconstruction.com Structural engineering by M.A.D. Design 562.897.1278 Landscape design by Ginny Hwang jogamdo.farm Cabinetry by Trejo’s Cabinets 562.946.9818 62 Concrete terrazzo countertop by Concrete Collaborative concretecollaborative.com 63 Bathtub from Signature Hardware signaturehardware.com 64 A Cut Above La Shed Architecture lashedarchitecture.com Construction by Renaud & Vigneau instagram.com/ renaudvigneau Landscape design by François Poirier 418.937.7223 Cabinetry by Charles Després

Dwell® (ISSN 1530-5309), Volume XXI Issue 5, publishes six double issues annually, by Dwell Life, Inc., 548 Market Street, PMB 35259, San Francisco, CA 94104-5401, USA. Occasional extra issues may also be published. Copyright ©2021. All rights reserved. In the US, Dwell® is a registered trademark of Dwell Life, Inc. Publisher assumes no responsibility for return of unsolicited

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450.929.1960 Windows by Shalwin Contemporain shalwin.ca 66–67 Mags Soft Low sofa by Hay hay.com; Mara coffee table from Article article.com; woodstove by Jøtul jotul .com; dining chairs from Ikea ikea.com; appliances from KitchenAid kitchenaid.com 70 Year-Round Oasis Spacebuilt spacebuilt.com.au Phillip Wallace Engineering 02.6685.7228 72 Muse couch by Sarah Ellison sarahellison.com .au; rug from Nikau nikaustore.com 73 Bobby bar stools and chairs by Daniel Tucker for DesignByThem designbythem.com; runner rugs from Pampa pampa.com.au; faucet from ABI Interiors abiinteriors.com.au 74–75 Rugs from Armadillo & Co. armadillo-co.com; couch

from HK Living hkliving .com.au; Bobby chairs by Daniel Tucker for DesignByThem designbythem.com; bed linen from The Sheet Society thesheetsociety .com.au; throw blanket from Città Design cittadesign.com 76 Muse couch, Huggy chair, and coffee table by Sarah Ellison sarahellison.com.au; rug from Nikau nikaustore .com; artwork by Octavia Tomyn octaviatomyn.com 78 An Orphaned Masterpiece Julien Pilon julienpilon.com General contracting by Georgesbat 78–79 Isabbo sofa from La Redoute laredoute.fr; Lettino sun loungers by Claudio Dondoli and Marco Pocci for Ligne Roset ligne-roset.com 80–81 Stool from La Redoute laredoute.fr; Stricto Sensu sofa by Didier Gomez cinna.fr; coffee table by Florence

manuscripts, art, or other materials. Subscription price for US residents: $28.00 for 6 issues. Canadian subscription rate: $39.95 (GST included) for 6 issues. All other countries: $49.95 for 6 issues. To order a subscription to Dwell or to inquire about an existing subscription, please write to: Dwell Magazine Customer Service, PO Box 5100, Harlan, IA 51593-0600, or call 877-939-3553.

Knoll knoll.com; Platner easy chair and ottoman knoll.com; Potence wall lamp by Jean Prouvé for Vitra vitra.com; Ground Wall tiles by Living Ceramics livingceramics .com; Tulip table by Eero Saarinen for Knoll knoll .com; PK22 chair by Poul Kjærholm for Fritz Hansen fritzhansen.com; Prado daybed by Christian Werner cinna.fr 82 Series 430 chair by Verner Panton vernerpanton.com 84–85 PH5 pendant by Louis Poulsen louispoulsen.com; Wishbone CH24 chairs by Hans J. Wegner for Carl Hansen & Søn carlhansen.com; Cross oak table by Matthew Hilton for Case Furniture casefurniture.com; induction cooktop from Miele mieleusa.com; Reale table by Carlo Mollino from Zanotta zanotta.it; Conference chair by Eero Saarinen for Knoll knoll.com 86–87 Parentesi lamp by Achille Castiglioni from Flos flos.com; Eos side chair, lounge chair, and square dining table by Matthew Hilton dwr.com 88 Natural Fit Kyu Sung Woo Architects kswa.com Construction by Stack + Co. stackac.com Structural engineering by RSE Associates rseassociates.com Civil engineering by Sherwood Consulting & Design sherwoodcd.com Landscape design by Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates mvvainc.com Lighting design by Nathalie Faubert nafaubert@aol.com MEP engineering by Sun Engineering sunengineering.net 90–91 Cabinets by Conestoga Wood Specialties

conestogawood.com; paint in Decorator’s White by Benjamin Moore benjaminmoore .com; Adelaide swivel chairs by Henrik Pedersen for BoConcept boconcept.com; Run table by Sam Hecht and Kim Colin for Emeco emeco.net; 611 chairs by Alvar Aalto for Artek artek.fi; Cielo pendant by Pablo Designs pablodesigns.com; piano from Steinway & Sons steinway.com 92–93 Neo sectional by Niels Bendtsen for Bensen bensen.com; About A Lounge 81 swivel chairs by Hee Welling for Hay hay.com; Butterfly stool by Sori Yanagi for Vitra vitra.com; Vellum drapery panels by Maharam maharam.com 94–95 Metal Clad windows by Loewen loewen.com 98 Cultivating Community Jobe Corral Architects jobecorral.com Mobile Loaves & Fishes mlf.org/community-first Construction by Crowell Builders crowellbuilders.com Structural engineering by Backbeat Structural Design backbeat.design 104 Waste Not, Want Not 106–107 Gladom side table, Gersby bookcase, kitchen cabinets and countertop, Minnesund mattresses, couch cushions, and throw pillows from Ikea ikea .com; drop cloth from Chicago Canvas and Supplies chicagocanvas .com; woodstove from Woodsman woodsman.co.nz; propane stove from Coleman coleman.com

For contact information for our advertisers, please turn to page 116.

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SEPTEM B ER/O C TO B ER 2021 DWELL

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28 Display Case

Great Homes Happen By Design

Photo: The Creative Collective, TJ Simon

Where Luxury Meets Sustainability - We specialize in designing high-end, prefabricated homes nationwide. By leveraging the efficiencies of our systems-built method, we provide you with cost savings, time predictability and a more sustainable build. From our initial site evaluation to move-in-day, our team is ready to guide you through the entire process. Visit our website to learn more.

Contact Us Today To Learn How We Can Help You Build Your Dream Home 800.691.7302 | info@stillwaterdwellings.com | www.stillwater-dwellings.com

one last thing I grew up in a Gustav Stickley Craftsman-style home, which was really beautiful but dark. The front porch, however, was really bright and light. We ate every dinner there in the summer, sitting around a table on a bunch of white director’s chairs, like the one I have now. Some of my best childhood memories are from sitting at that table. I don’t know exactly which chairs my parents had because so many people make these. I

wanted to find the classic, most quintessential, most ubiquitous version. I Googled “director’s chairs,” and there’s a Wikipedia page, and it said who held the first design license, a company called Gold Medal. So I Googled that, and the Chair Store popped up—and they had it! It wasn’t complicated, right? It was just like, that’s so amazing—it’s something that’s survived since 1892. And within two minutes, I was able to find it.

I love objects that have a certain purity to them. And I think this is a great example—a strangely iconic and quiet piece of design that, in a very simple way, fits its need and does it with a lot of style. There’s something concise about it and something that’s just really honest. You look at it and know exactly how it does what it does, and it goes on to do exactly what you think it’s going to do. It’s perfect as is.

Lighting designer—and one of this year’s Dwell 24— Peter B. Staples finds comfort in a classic.

AS TOLD TO

Kathryn McLamb PHOTO BY | @JAMIECHUNGSTUDIO

Jamie Chung

When lighting designer Peter B. Staples, founder of New York studio Blue Green Works, moved to a Chinatown apartment last year, he sought to “peel back and tone down” his surroundings in hope of finding clarity amid the pandemic’s chaos. He painted the space a warm white color and added straightforward furnishings that project an air of simplicity. Next to a Donald Judd–inspired sofa he built from plywood and around a mission-style dining table, he placed several director’s chairs like this one, its design holding immense value for him, sentimental and otherwise.

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paloform.com

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