Interior Design Spring Homes 2020

MARCH 21, 2020

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CONTENTS SPRING 2020

VOLUME 91 NUMBER 4

ON THE COVER In a New York brownstone by Studio Arthur Casas, a basement-level pool room has walls of honed Avario limestone. Photography: Filippo Bamberghi.

FEATURES 96 TRUE FICTION

by Georgina McWhirter

In New York, a pas-dedeux of eras enriches an Upper East Side mansion

by Meyer Davis Studio.

106 SHAKER HEIGHTS

by Michael Snyder

Atop a cliff in earthquakeprone Chile, +Arquitectos and Gubbins Polidura Arquitectos defy the seismic odds with a lightboned vacation pavilion.

114 MARSHMALLOW MODERN

by Edie Cohen

Lauren Rottet brings new life—her own—to a George Nelson beach house in Montauk, New York.

124 ALTERED PERSPECTIVE

by Rebecca Dalzell

Bureau d’Architecture Marc Corbiau gives a new view to an artist’s residence and studio in SintGenesius-Rode, Belgium.

134 MAKING IT NEW

by Daniella Ohad

In the hands of five Japanese artists, traditional craft materials and techniques take a contemporary turn.

144 LAP OF LUXURY

by Tania Menai

Studio Arthur Casas reinvents a storied New York brownstone for techforward living.

152 ANCIENT AND MODERN

by Casey Hall

In Beijing, Archstudio transforms a traditional courtyard house into a gleaming contemporary residence that still respects the past.

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ERIC LAIGNEL

spring

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fu r n it u re

lig hting

a c c e sso r ie s

syste ms

N e w Yo r k | L o s A ng e le s | ddc nyc . c o m

CONTENTS SPRING 2020

VOLUME 91 NUMBER 4

spring.20 open house 35 THE MUSES ARE HEARD

by Jeff Book

41 SYLVAN SITES

by Georgina McWhirter

departments 21 HEADLINERS 25 HAPPENINGS

edited by Annie Block 28 TRENDING

edited by Rebecca Thienes 51 AT HOME

by Monica Khemsurov

Cristina Celestino Primes Her Canvas 55 MARKETPLACE

edited by Rebecca Thienes 160 BOOKS

by Stanley Abercrombie

163 INTERVENTION

by Mar Plus Ask

JAKUB SKOKAN AND MARTIN TŮMA/BOYSPLAYNICE

161 CONTACTS

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curreyandcompany.com Atlanta | Dallas | High Point | Las Vegas | New York

editor in chief chief content officer

Cindy Allen, hon. IIDA MANAGING DIRECTOR

ART DIRECTOR

Helene E. Oberman

Karla Lima

HOMES EXECUTIVE EDITOR

SENIOR DESIGNER

Jen Renzi

Stephanie Denig

EXECUTIVE EDITOR

DESIGNER

Annie Block

Hanna Day-Tenerowicz

DEPUTY EDITOR

CREATIVE SERVICES

Edie Cohen

Marino Zullich

FEATURES DIRECTOR

PRODUCTION DIRECTOR

Peter Webster

Kevin Fagan 917-934-2825

SENIOR EDITORS

Georgina McWhirter Nicholas Tamarin MARKET DIRECTOR

Rebecca Thienes ASSISTANT TO THE EDITOR IN CHIEF

Amy Torres ASSISTANT EDITORS

Wilson Barlow Colleen Curry BOOKS EDITOR

Stanley Abercrombie EDITOR AT LARGE

SENIOR PREPRESS AND IMAGING SPECIALIST

Igor Tsiperson

interiordesign.net SITE EDITOR

Carlene Olson ASSOCIATE EDITOR

Kristie Garrell WEB EDITOR

Quinn Halman VIDEO PRODUCER

James Eades

Elena Kornbluth

MULTIMEDIA PRODUCER

CONTRIBUTING EDITORS

Steven Wilsey

Raul Barreneche Mairi Beautyman Aric Chen Rebecca Dalzell Laura Fisher Kaiser Craig Kellogg Jane Margolies Mark McMenamin Murray Moss Larry Weinberg CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHERS

Benny Chan/Fotoworks Jimmy Cohrssen Art Gray Eric Laignel Michelle Litvin Garrett Rowland

VIDEO EDITOR

Stephanie Couture SITE CONTRIBUTOR

Jesse Dorris

PRESIDENT

Amanda Schneider BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT DIRECTOR

Olga Odeide

CHAIRMAN AND CEO OF SANDOW

Adam I. Sandow PRESIDENT

Schwinn 88942/96 Pull designed by Paul McCobb.

SANDOW was founded by visionary entrepreneur Adam Sandow in 2003 with the goal of building a truly innovative media company that would reinvent the traditional publishing model. Today, SANDOW is a fully integrated solutions platform that includes leading content, tools, and services, powering innovation for the design and luxury industries. Its diverse portfolio of media assets includes Interior Design, Luxe Interiors + Design, Galerie, and NewBeauty. Materials Innovation brands include global materials consultancy Material Connexion, game-changing material sampling and logistics platform Material Bank, and materials reclamation program Sample Loop. SANDOW brands also include research and strategy firm ThinkLab. In 2019, SANDOW was selected by the New York Economic Development Council of New York to become the official operator of NYCxDESIGN Week, beginning in 2020.

Erica Holborn CHIEF DESIGN OFFICER

Cindy Allen INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY DIRECTOR

Edward Sanborn VICE PRESIDENT, CREATIVE OPERATIONS

Michael Shavalier

(Actual size.)

www.schwinnoriginals.com

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vice president publisher Carol Cisco

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business development VICE PRESIDENT

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integrated marketing

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Regina Freedman 917-934-2835

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E D I T O R ’ S welcome

there’s no place like home This must be Timothy Leary’s most authentically horrible psychedelic trip, the worst anyone could possibly conjure from the darkest depths of their imagination—let alone to be actually living through, as we all are. My thoughts and prayers (and my team’s) go to those who are now suffering, to their families, and to the many bereaved. To all we wish Godspeed to recovery, health, and relief.

I am writing to you in longhand. I fished out my old Nakaya fountain pen because this moment requires our level best in all things. Yet I have to admit my utter disbelief to be writing these words, these letters forming through my nib. Never in a million years. And I am just as astonished that, in my own lifetime, I had to witness civilization packing up for fear, fire, and foe—to shelter in place, “pause,” socially distance—and indeed had to do so myself.

And I did box my life in one place, and it has proved, through and through, representative of that good old saying: Home Sweet Home.

Sweet, welcoming, protective, safe, delicious home. Here I can enjoy the simple pleasures of life, the warmth of my dear; here I can learn, inform, stay in touch, support, and work—seemingly 24/7—which is the truest testament to technology, really the best our times can offer. Here, finally, I can plan and look to the future.

However grim the news or disturbing the forecasts, I know a good future lies ahead. And here’s best proof: the heroes. In their brown UPS livery or gray/blue mail-carrier uniforms, these women and men keep our households running; the doctors, nurses, and entire medical field selflessly soldier on every day, literally risking their lives, doing their utmost to protect us and bring us back to well-being. And farmers, grocery workers, distributors, truckers, railway men, utility workers, civil servants, and teachers have all joined to help us get to the other side of this.

To these ordinary people doing extraordinary things—my brand of hero—I want to add to the mix, with modesty and humility, architects and designers, manufacturers and trade press...us. The whole of our industry has risen to help, to support, to lead forward as we all well know.

I am receiving countless stories, testimonials, and reports of just as many acts of kindness, and ones not random at all. Bravo! You all make me the proudest, make me want to do more, to help more!

Please accept our Spring Homes edition as our token to you, and to our collective better future.

Cherish the stories of home inside and let’s lead the way forward.

On behalf of Adam Sandow and all of us at Sandow Media—including my colleagues Pam Jaccarino at Luxe Interiors + Design, Avi Rajagopal at Metropolis, Jackie Terrebonne at Galerie, and Amanda Schneider at ThinkLab—we wish you health, safety, and a speedy return to your best, productive, professional future.

Crack on!

Follow me on Instagram

thecindygram

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C E L E B R AT I N G 3 6 Y E A R S O F C O N T E M P O R A R Y F U R N I T U R E D E S I G N A N D FA B R I C AT I O N - S I N C E 1 9 8 3

Vichy 4 Light Pendant courtesy of Jonathan Browning Studios

H E ADL I N E RS “My ambition is to create timeless, enduring designs”

Bureau d’Architecture Marc Corbiau “Altered Perspective,” page 124 architect, founder: Marc Corbiau firm site: Brussels, Belgium. firm size: Four. current projects: Private residences in Rhode St. Genese and Uccle, Belgium; a residence in Luxembourg. role model: Corbiau’s maternal grandmother, a toile painter. going green: Corbiau recently experienced Piet Oudolf’s work at the High Line in New York for the first time. green thumb: He is passionate about botany and often collaborates with landscape designers. corbiau.com

Meyer Davis “True Fiction,” page 96 principal: Gray Davis. principal: Will Meyer. director: Liz Curry. firm site: New York. firm size: 52 designers and 6 administrators. current projects: Crown Sydney, Australia; Greenwich Village residence in New York; Etéreo in Riviera Maya, Mexico. role model: Architect and collaborator Chris Wilkinson of WilkinsonEyre, for his vision, work ethic, and imaginative, ambitious sensibility.

TOP: CHRISTIAN HAGEN

at the lake: Davis and his husband split their time between residences in the West Village and near Copake Lake in upstate New York, where they’ve refurbished and built numerous houses. by the sea: Meyer and family summer in East Hampton in a Hugh Newell Jacobsen home he carefully modernized and restored. in the woods: Curry spends weekends with her family at her woodland retreat in upstate New York, which reminds her of childhood summers growing up in Poland. meyerdavis.com SPRING.20

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h e a d l i n e rs

Studio Arthur Casas

Rottet Studio

Archstudio

“Lap of Luxury,” page 144

“Marshmallow Modern,” page 114 founding principal: Lauren Rottet, FAIA, FIIDA. firm sites: New York and Houston. firm size: 75 designers and administrative staff. current projects: The Ritz-Carlton hotel in Atlanta; law offices in Houston; a hotel renovation in Cartagena, Colombia. role model: The late architect Henry Cobb, for his support of so many young designers.

“Ancient and Modern,” page 152

founding partner, project architect:

Arthur Casas. firm site: São Paulo, Brazil. firm size: 40 architects. current projects: A luxury shopping center and a mixed-use complex in São Paulo; Epic City Home luxury condominium building in Goiânia; all in Brazil. role model: Frank Lloyd Wright, for his command of scale and unwavering commitment to applying it at each project stage. tuning in: Casas loves Brazilian popular music including bossa nova. taking off: The frequent traveler recently jetted to Cape Town to learn about contemporary South-African architectural production. arthurcasas.com

working hard: Even on vacation in Montauk, Rottet is constantly drafting new designs at her desk, which overlooks the water. working out: A committed supporter of local businesses, she frequents a favorite yoga studio in Montauk. rottetstudio.com founder, chief architect: Han

Wenqiang. firm site: Beijing. firm size: Seven. current projects: Tea plantation

in Yichang, and an artist’s studio in Yunnan, both in China. role model: Pritzker Prize winning Swiss architect Peter Zumthor, for his acute grasp of construction, materials, and spatial atmosphere. mind: Han regularly practices meditation. body: He is an enthusiastic swimmer. archstudio.cn

Gubbins Polidura Arquitectos

+Arquitectos

“Shaker Heights,” page 106 founding partner: Antonio Polidura. firm site: Santiago, Chile. firm size: Seven. current projects: Lo Recabarren Office building, Inmobilaria TÁNICA; Duoc University, San Bernardo; TownHouses building, Inmobiliaria Patagonland, all in Santiago, Chile. role model: Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, for his governing principle, “Less is more.”

“Shaker Heights,” page 106 founding partner: Alex Brahm. firm site: Santiago, Chile. firm size: Twelve. current projects: Lo Recabarren Office building, Inmobilaria TÁNICA, and Duoc University, San Bernardo, both in Santiago, Chile. role model: Oscar Niemeyer, for his unsurpassed mastery working with curved forms.

trainer: An avid swimmer, Polidura is preparing for an open-water race. planner: He’s also reabsorbing the perennial lessons in The Death and Life of Great American Cities by Jane Jacobs. gubbinspolidura.cl 22

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player: Brahm hits the tennis court at least twice a week. dreamer: He’s currently re-reading El Hacedor, Jorge Luis Borges’s magical collection of poems, essays, and sketches. masarquitectos.cl

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ÂŽ Norman and Benjamin Cherner designs made in the USA

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edited by Annie Block

happen ings group show

In 2021, when the pandemic will hopefully be behind us, one building on the two-block site that forms the Denver Art Museum turns 50. Its age is significant but its architect even more so: Gio Ponti. Furthermore, it’s the late Italian designer’s only completed building in North America, a commission he received in 1965 when he was 74.

Breaking with traditional museum archetypes, Ponti conceived the seven-story North Building, as it was then called, as a castlelike structure, with eclectic window openings, a mountain-view rooftop terrace, and 24 facades, the latter clad in more than a million reflective glass tiles.

The structure’s upcoming anniversary has kicked off a campus-wide transformation overseen by Machado Silvetti and Fentress Architects. The DAM’s titanium Hamilton Building by Studio Libeskind stays as is. But access to it has been streamlined courtesy of the new Anna and John J. Sie Welcome Center, which adjoins Ponti’s structure, now called the Martin Building. When the DAM reopens to the public later this year, phase one of the Martin redo will reveal three lower floors reconfigured by OMA and Esrawe + Cadena, as well as the apt exhibition, “Gio Ponti: Designer of a Thousand Talents.”

The Denver Art Museum’s glass tile–clad Martin Building was designed by Gio Ponti in 1971; for its 50th anniversary, the structure is being restored and renovated by Machado Silvetti, Fentress Architects, OMA, and Ersawe + Cadena and reopening later this year.

JAMES FLORIO PHOTOGRAPHY/COURTESY OF THE DENVER ART MUSEUM

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h a ppe n ings

royal treatment

With a name like Majesty’s Pleasure, it’s expected that this Toronto spa provides services that pamper and indulge. Thanks to Jayme Million and Alex Simpson of Studio Author, its 2,200-square-foot environment does the same. The firm cofounders’ experience designing hotels and restaurants with “rich, textured narratives” is apparent in their first salon project.

Million and Simpson conceptualized what they call the “dreamland of an It Girl,” expressed in feminine touches—such as dustypink decorative fringe and comfy pale-blue upholstered treatment chairs—balanced with elements in sophisticated aubergine and goldenrod. The designers also introduced the unexpected. A statement sink in heavily veined blush marble can transform into a DJ booth for events, a full-service cocktail bar is U-shaped, and neon signage declares that this layered, immersive jewel of a space is, in fact, a reality.

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NIAMH BARRY

Clockwise from below: At Majesty’s Pleasure spa in Toronto by Studio Author, velvet upholstery, a brass table from Elte MKT, and laminate floor planks define the waiting area. The marble sink and custom ottomans. Fiber artist Charlotte Blake’s fringe installation. The marble-topped hair lounge table.

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Delightfully dramatic objects lean into the curve

heavenly bodies Creating organic designs with graphic impact is not easy to master. But Cape Town–based ceramic artist Nebnikro (Ben Orkin spelled backward-ish) does just that, exploring the dimensionality of queer identity through sculpture.

Created as a pair, the vessels Guy On the Beach and Looking Up At You represent two bodies in relationship to one another and offer a reflection on love and longing.

They also play with color, the interior shade of each form matching the other’s exterior and vice versa in a yin-meets-yang way.

Says the artist, “I use the act of making and producing as a means to work through and communicate ideas that sometimes make me feel uncomfortable, particularly my experiences of love.” Turn the page for more bold, biomorphic designs.

Through OKHA.

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edited by Rebecca Thienes

NIEL VOSLOO

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“What drives me is an interest in generative forms, asymmetry, fluidity, bubbles— the microscopic and the subatomic” —Pamela Sunday

1

5

4

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bowl, Large Offering vase, and Bow vases in Black, Black Dot on Chalk, and Chalk Dot on Black, all in resin by Dinosaur Designs. dinosaurdesigns.com 3. Love Handles ceramic vases in black and natural speckle by Anissa Kermiche through The Conran Shop. theconranshop.co.uk 4. Constance Guisset’s Ether reversible show plates and flat plate, all in porcelain

by Richard Ginori. richardginori1735.com 5. Michael Upton’s Truss original print on cotton canvas by Upton. whatsupton.com

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3

2: BART CELESTINO. 3: COURTESY OF THE CONRAN SHOP

1. Rubrum sculpture in glazed stoneware by Pamela Sunday. pamelasunday.com 2. Stephen Ormandy and Louise Olsen’s Medium Beetle

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the muses are heard firms: mathias klotz; carolina pedroni arquitectura site: josĂŠ ignacio, uruguay

Harmonious hues unify the wood siding and Cor-Ten steel roof of the yoga pavilion, which projects over a pond.

ROLAND HALBE

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The small buildings are part of Klotz and Pedroni’s master plan for actualizing the estate’s potential as a bucolic hospitality property. The yoga studio and the concrete-framed, one-bedroom villa rise beside a pond. The two-bedroom guest house, another prototype for future accommodations, faces the water from a distance, sitting lightly on a wooden platform that doubles as a deck. It was conceived as a prefab

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ROLAND HALBE

Every summer, hordes of the beautiful people descend on Uruguay’s José Ignacio, the chic alternative to the nearby resort of Punta del Este. “It’s a little crazy then,” says Chilean architect Mathias Klotz. “Off season, it’s a South American oasis.” He and Uruguayan architect Carolina Pedroni recently added a trio of structures to a 12-acre private vineyard property there—a compound that entertains a constant stream of guests while embracing its rustic setting with refinement.

The buildings—a villa, guest house, and yoga pavilion—are crisp modernist boxes clad in reddish native lapacho wood, from siding to sun-screening sliding doors and folding shutters. “The wooden skin unites all the structures and provides privacy and flexibility,” Pedroni explains. “The designs integrate interior and exterior and allow the spaces to be very open or divided in different ways.” Interiors wrapped in either eucalyptus or abedul, both light-hued woods, are another unifying element.

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Clockwise from top left: A guest house bathroom is wrapped in eucalyptus wood. Sliding doors faced in raffia fabric divide the yoga pavilion’s skylit entrance hall.

Durable and indigenous lapacho wood forms the pavilion’s crisp cladding. Charles and Ray Eames chairs face a custom sofa in the guest house’s airy living area, flanked by bedrooms and baths. Large sliding glass doors open the living area to an expansive deck.

ope n house

ROLAND HALBE

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–Jeff Book FROM FRONT DELTA LIGHT THROUGH TRIOS LIGHTING: CEILING LIGHTS (GUEST HOUSE). THROUGH MAD FOR MODERN: SIDE CHAIRS. ANIBAL ABBATE: STONE FLOORING (VILLA). CAMILA OKS: CUSHIONS. THROUGHOUT DURAVIT: SINKS.

ROLAND HALBE

Clockwise from top left: Floor-to-ceiling folding shutters can screen the villa’s outdoor living area. The view from the guest house encompasses the yoga pavilion and the villa to the left and the right of the pond, respectively. The mirrored cabinet in the skylit yoga pavilion bath is custom. Beneath a vaulted, laminated-beam ceiling, folding glass doors open the wellproportioned yoga studio to the pond.

design that could be adapted to various sites. “These are simple but demanding structures, built with a high level of craftsmanship,” Klotz says. With their shared materials and sensibility, the three look like siblings. Their number may grow in the future, with possible added guest quarters, a pool, a restaurant, “or, perhaps, nothing more,” he notes.

The property is called Las Musas—The Muses—after the owner’s wine label. Given design that fosters communion with nature, the name is apt, particularly when classical music is performed in the yoga pavilion. With its wood cladding and vaulted ceiling, “the acoustics are wonderful,” Pedroni reports. “It’s an inspiring venue for creative activities.”

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roomandboard.com

2020: THE MOBIUS PENDANT 800.826.4766 | VERMONT USA | DESIGN@VTFORGE.COM | HUBBARDTONFORGE.COM

All Designs and Images ©1989 - 2020 Hubbardton Forge, LLC. All Rights Reserved. Hubbardton Forge is the registered trademark of Hubbardton Forge, LLC.

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sylvan sites Four rural idylls, from New Zealand to New York, are woodsy indoors and out A cedar-and-concrete house by Vaughn McQuarrie hunkers down in Queenstown, New Zealand. See page 46 for more.

SIMON DEVITT/PHOTOFOYER

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PETER AARON/OTTO

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bohlin cywinski jackson site Shelter Island, New York recap A city chef and his partner decamp to a weekender sited in a deciduous forest beside a tidal lagoon. The roofline of the intersecting volumes, in copper-accented Western red cedar, rises toward the waterfront, allowing the guest bedrooms and master suite to take advantage of sweeping Peconic Bay panoramas.

PETER AARON/OTTO

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of possible architectures site Sheffield, Massachusetts recap This contemporary expression of rural American architecture nods to modernist flat-roof pavilions like Ludwig Mies van der Rohe’s Farnsworth House. Every window and door is a floor-to-ceiling picture frame of the grounds—encompassing an apple orchard and wetland ravine—with motorized privacy shades and insect screens concealed on the bleached-cedar exterior.

RORY GARDINER/PHOTOFOYER

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Photo Andrea Ferrari | Styling Studiopepe | Ad García Cumini

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recap Eschewing the ubiquitious glass-box aesthetic, this angular abode— its shape alluding to improvised “bivvy” shelters, craggy glaciers, and the region’s bygone mining huts—balances cocooning spaces enveloped in band-sawn pine plywood with stellar views of Lake Wakatipu through peekaboo slot windows.

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pavel mícek architects site Beskydy Mountains, Czech Republic recap In a remote part of the Beskydy Protected Landscape Area exists a boxy concrete shell, partially burrowed into the earth and topped by a larch A-frame. Over time, the wood will patinate to a silver-gray while the concrete will become mossy—processes serving to further embed the house in its surroundings.

—Georgina McWhirter

JAKUB SKOKAN AND MARTIN TŮMA/BOYSPLAYNICE

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P H O N E

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at home

Italian architect Cristina Celestino is the last person you’d expect to have an understated home. Since founding the design studio Attico in 2011, she’s cultivated her own brand of baroque, feminine maximalism, one rooted in classical Milanese style and heavy on color and texture. Many of her furnishings feature feathers, florals, or fringe. Her interiors—for clients like Fendi, Sergio Rossi, and LuisaViaRoma—tend to be wrapped entirely in saturated velvet upholstery, graphic carpeting, and candy-colored tiles. Yet inside her 1,722-squarefoot apartment in Milan’s Citta Studi neighborhood, the walls are white. The sofa is taupe.

“Personal interiors need a different approach than public ones,” she explains. “I wanted to keep my own house freer and not linked to a specific period, partly so I can change it easily.”

Reason being, Celestino has spent the better part of her life collecting iconic works of Italian modernism—from a 1960 Tobia Scarpa bed to a 1982 Paolo Piva coffee table—and wanted her space to act as a blank canvas for re-arranging or replacing those objects as she acquires new ones. (One ongoing obsession: lamps. “I have so many that part of the collection is stored at my parents’ house,” she says.) The spare decor also keeps the focus on the character of the apartment itself, which is why she bought it in the first place: Built in the 1940s, it has a wide living room, original Palladiana marble and parquet floors, and a striking ceramic fireplace. Recently she discovered that the fireplace—along with a console, table, wardrobe, and some of the apartment’s interior doors—were all designed by Italian icon Osvaldo Borsani, whose Tecno P40 armchairs and D70 sofa Celestino has owned for years.

It’s not to say that Celestino’s design language is missing from the apartment entirely, though. The shelves are lined with her own colorful glass atomizers and vases, and other nooks feature her cabinets, mirrors, and lamps. She also has shells, corals, and dried flowers scattered around the space, reflecting one of the biggest themes in her work: natural forms. “The house is essentially a catalogue of my research and my personal identity,” Celestino says. “It’s not the identity of a brand. But it perfectly reflects my vision.”

—Monica Khemsurov

VALENTINA SOMMARIVA/LIVING INSIDE; PRODUCTION: ALICE SALERNI/LIVING INSIDE

cristina celestino primes her canvas Left: The designer in her Milan studio.

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1. Celestino had owned Osvaldo Borsani’s D70 sofa and P40 armchairs—shown in her living room alongside a Paolo Piva coffee table, vintage Italian lamps, and a standing bell jar she designed with Mateo Bastoni—for years before she found out that many elements of the apartment are attributed to Borsani.

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2. Nature-inspired motifs in Celestino’s Passiflora wallpaper for Misha Wallcoverings reflect her countryside upbringing.

3. In the bedroom are a 1950s Stilnovo floor lamp, a 1960 Tobia Scarpa bed, and a 1970 wall sconce by Angelo Brotto for Esperia, for whom Celestino designed two new lamps last year.

4. In Celestino’s reading nook, Joe Colombo armchairs pair with her first-ever collecting purchase: a 1965 floor lamp by Luigi Bandini Buti for Kartell, found on eBay. 5. Celestino’s terra-cotta Acanti tiles for Fornace Brioni were inspired by the geometry of hedges in a formal garden.

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6. Celestino in her studio, with her geometric Obei Obei mirrors for Atipico.

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7. While serving as creative director of the Italian heritage tile manufacturer BottegaNove, from 2015 to 2017, Celestino designed these feather-inspired wall tiles.

3, 4, 10: HELENIO BARBETTA/LIVING INSIDE; PRODUCTION: CHIARA DAL CANTO/LIVING INSIDE. 5: MATTIA BALSAMINI. 11: ANDREA BARTOLUCCIO

1, 6, 7, 9: HELENIO BARBETTA/LIVING INSIDE; PRODUCTION: CHIARA DAL CANTO/LIVING INSIDE. 8: VALENTINA SOMMARIVA/LIVING INSIDE; PRODUCTION: ALICE SALERNI/LIVING INSIDE

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8. Samples for Fornace Brioni, a fourthgeneration Italian terra-cotta tile maker Celestino became creative director of in 2017.

9. Artworks she created with Fujifilm in 2015 were inspired by the Vienna Secession movement and feature some of Adolf Loos’s favorite materials digitally printed onto slate.

10. A Glas Italia cabinet filled with one of the first Attico designs: perfume atomizers made from fluted glass.

11. At right, the designer’s Plissé rug for CC-Tapis.

“I wanted to keep my own house freer and not linked to a specific period, partly so I can change it easily” SPRING.20

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all that jazz A century has officially passed since the Roaring Twenties ushered extraordinary decadence into everyday life. But for Marie-Lise Féry, the aesthetic of that era lives on. The French cabaret and, yes, the circus, inspire the former antiquarian’s young company, Magic Circus Éditions. Five years after its founding, the design brand has joined forces with Venini to launch Balloon. The mouth-blown glass and fluted-brass pendants are fitted with LED bulbs, measure 14 by 10 ½ inches, and come in two designs. The first is Canne, its crisp swirls in sweet color combinations, while its counterpart, Spirale, flaunts twisted ribbons in similar hues. A range of brass and nickel finishes, utterly Art Deco, completes the look. magic-circus.fr

CANNE

edited by Rebecca Thienes text by Wilson Barlow, Colleen Curry, Mark McMenamin, and Georgina McWhirter ©PIERRICK VERNY

what’s new from maison & objet SPRING.20

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BANIAN

“It’s all about profiles and contours unfolding in a framework of extreme graphic precision”

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CAROLINE GRONDIN AND GUILLAUME AVARGUEZ

island vibes Four years ago, Caroline Grondin and Guillaume Avarguez leveraged their dual backgrounds in creative direction to cofound a product-design studio, Appartement2.

The brand’s mission: to produce what Grondin and Avarguez describe as “minimalist, tropical” designs— conceived and entirely crafted in Réunion, the remote French island off the east coast of Africa they call home. The pair’s debut collection, Banian, vivifies their thoughtful focus on premium local materials and structured lines. The nature-inspired series encompasses an armchair, a coffee table, a console, and a stool that balance mazelike metal frames with tops and seats in tamarind, a sultry wood sourced from island rainforests. appartement2.com

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ASMARA

“The audacious, futuristic curves are as beguiling today as always”

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layabouts Back in 1966, when interior architect Bernard

Govin pitched a modular seating concept to Ligne Roset, he had flexible lounging on his

mind. “I lived student-style for a long time: Even if we had seats, we lolled on the floor,” he says.

Seen as symbolic of nonconformity and the primal urge to reconnect with the earth by rolling in the grass, the design was a hit, and the originals have long been prized in private collections. Now, the Asmara series returns in a reissue commemorating the company’s 160th anniversary. Five reconfigurable modules—convex, concave, low back, high back, semi-circular— are formed from high-resilience polyurethane foam with polyester quilting, then covered in stretchy jersey fabrics with twin-needle stitching. The fluid lines embrace the body, whether sitting upright in a standalone chair or reclining on a sprawling landscape. ligne-roset.com SPRING.20

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market P L A C E maison & objet

“The linear silhouettes boldly frame the character of the stained wood-grain surfaces”

against

the grain WOODERNISM

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Rhonda Drakeford’s London design emporium Darkroom, cofounded with Lulu Roper-Caldbeck (who left in 2016), is known for its ultra-bold wares. This year the brand celebrates a milestone decade in business with Woodernism, a capsule collection focused on sustainability. Among the highlights: Blok, a six-piece series of ash-veneer furniture. The shapes of the console, bench, mirror, shelf, and table/stools riff on the monuments and codes of ancient civilizations (think Stonehenge and Runic alphabets). Each piece is stained with brightly colored water-based pigments that “on first view might appear shocking, vulgar even,” says Drakeford. “The look is intentionally challenging.” A percentage of sales will be donated to the U.K.’s Woodland Trust, which plants trees to fight climate change.

Darkroom has also partnered with FRMD to produce framed wall prints featuring the symbols paired with photographic reproductions of wood whorls. darkroomlondon.com

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market P L A C E micro

manufacturer Serax product Kiki standout One of fashion’s famed Antwerp Six enters the interiors sphere Belgian fashion designer Ann Demeulemeester has been known to knot fabrics in her avant-garde creations. It’s a technique she transferred to homewares when conceiving a table lamp for her own abode, hand-dying and knotting viscose threads onto fine and sharply pointed lacqueredANN DEMEULEMEESTER steel supports made by a local metalsmith. Now the design gets reborn as a production piece in a hand-painted gradient of scarlet-cream or black-white. Both are perfectly suited to Demeulemeester’s characteristic style— and for any space demanding sartorial edge. serax.com

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COURTESY OF SERAX

spiked up

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Brooklyn Army Terminal BROOKLYN

The Studio of JM Szymanski THE BRONX

Times Square Design Lab at Design Pavilion MANHATTAN

SHoP Architects in conjunction with Empire Outlets STATEN ISLAND

Stickbulb by RUX Studios QUEENS

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Ana Milena Hernández Palacios and Christophe Penasse for Houtique

Mae Engelgeer for CC-Tapis

Sebastian Herkner for Ligne Roset

Elena Salmistraro for Bosa

product Wink standout Seeing is believing

product Bliss Big Ultimate standout To reinforce the artful

product Taru standout The founder of his

product Bernardo standout The Milanese design-

when it comes to the Masquespacio founders’ optical perch: Its gleaming finish is real 24-karat gold. houtique.es

asymmetry in her Memphisinspired rug, the Dutch textile designer used a variety of wool and silk pile heights to sculptural effect. cc-tapis.com

namesake studio debuts a curvy sofa and accompanying ottoman—both dressed in head-totoe wool-nylon—for the French furniture maker. ligne-roset.com

er’s ceramic panda is a mindful addition to the manufacturer’s line of animal sculptures, raising awareness for the plight of endangered species. bosatrade.com

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Ben van Berkel for Alessi

Douglas Mont of Rispal

Toni Grilo of Blackcork

Jaime Hayon for Nanimarquina

product Giro standout For Dutch firm UN-

product n°14.950 Mante Religieuse standout After reviving the his-

product Frame standout The Portuguese compa-

product Silhouette standout The Spanish designer’s

Studio’s first foray into kidfriendly product design, its founder introduces softly styled steel cutlery along with a collection of tableware in recyclable thermoplastic resin. alessi.com

toric French brand in 2018, its designer-owner updates the company’s iconic 1950s floor lamp in acetylated pine, fire-treated via the Japanese yakisugi charring method. rispal.com

ny’s art director offers a collection of tables including low, side, and console versions, all with a base of additive-free cork supporting a steel structure and glass top. blackcork.pt

latest for the rug maker comes in both a hand-loomed wool indoor version and a hand-tufted PET outdoor iteration with multicolor face-sketch motif. nanimarquina.com SPRING.20

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bend the rules Winding forms stay ahead of the curve

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1. Oscar sofa upholstered in cotton velvet by Duistt. duistt.com 2. Onda oak and black-lacquered steel shelves

by Schneid through Stillfried Wien. stillfried.com 3. Emtivi Studio’s silk and Himalayan wool Roy rug by Illulian. illulian.com 4. Beluga glass and steel sconce by ENO Studio.

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5. Paon black-lacquered steel and rattan coatrack by Colonel. moncolonel.fr 6. Mira gloss-painted side tables with plywood bases and MDF tops

by Maison Dada. maisondada.com

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Tune in Facebook Live May 18

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connecting & engaging the A+D community

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spring20

Home shines through

ERIC LAIGNEL

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true fiction In New York, a pas-de-deux of eras enriches an Upper East Side mansion by Meyer Davis Studio text: georgina mcwhirter photography: eric laignel

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It’s a crisp winter’s afternoon on New York’s Upper East Side, outside an elegant seven-story limestone townhouse designed ground-up

by Meyer Davis Studio. Inside the entry vestibule, gilded wall paneling speaks the same neoclassical language as the facade’s Georgianproportion windows and Beaux-Arts wrought-iron railings. Yet the mood is entirely contemporary. Are You Really Here? asks a Jeppe Hein neon artwork. Such existential questioning terminates with the arrival of Coco the goldendoodle and a tumble of schoolboys—the homeowners’ son plus coterie—who shuck their shoes and race to the basement rec room. Tradition, the cutting edge, and family life: it’s a recipe that gives the home its specific charge.

Demolishing two townhouses that had been converted into apartment buildings cleared the way for a 14,500-square-foot seven-bedroom for the family of five. The idea—not obligated by any landmark requirement—was that the house should look as if it had always been there.

To that end, Meyer Davis’s longtime director Elizabeth Curry, who has worked with firm cofounders Gray Davis and Will Meyer for more than a decade and ran point on the project, walked the neighborhood to Previous spread: Nika Zupanc’s gold-finished Cherry pendant dominates the view from the kitchen to the dining area.

Top: Gilt trim and a custom Nathan Litera console adorn the entry, paved in Bleu de Savoie and Bianco Pura marbles. Bottom: The plaster main stair linking floors one through seven was hand-formed on-site.

Opposite top: Full-height pocket doors can slide along the edge of the marble island to separate the kitchen and dining area; French doors lead to a rear yard edged in faux boxwood. Opposite bottom: A glass balustrade allows sight lines from the entry up to the formal living room.

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match limestone samples to surrounding mansions. Herringbone oak floorboards inside were laid with varying gaps to appear less clinically uniform— as if native to a turn-of-the-century Parisian aerie—and the wood treated to processes including fuming, staining, and tumbling until the design team was satisfied it looked suitably aged.

Amalgamating details culled from research into manors in New York, London, and Paris inspired the residence’s delicate trim and dentil molding.

Within this classical shell live au courant interventions such as the sleek kitchen, sculptural grand stair, and daring art by the likes of Tracey Emin and Jack Pierson—collected by the wife, a European businesswoman and contemporary design connoisseur. The narrative (and Meyer Davis always has a strong throughline) is that someone with today’s taste remodeled a period structure. But of course, it’s all brandnew—a postmodern sleight of hand tethered not to a real-world referent but magicked out of imagination. “It’s one thing to renovate a historic property,” notes Meyer. “It’s quite another to use that as the grounding design idea, and then innovate within.”

Since opening their New York studio in 1999, Davis and Meyer have built a reputation for carefully considered interiors: refined but not buttoned up, modern but not aggressively so, aspirational yet approachable. Perhaps because early in their careers they worked across a range of vocabularies—for minimalist-minded classicist John Saladino, modernist Charles Gwathmey, and deconstructivist Peter Eisenman, collectively—the partners are true stylistic egalitarians. The pair privilege neither architecture nor interiors (“they work best intertwined,” Meyer declares), nor are they wedded to a single typology (“we sway toward the modern but are not strict about it,” adds Davis). That fluid border crossing makes them entirely current. It was at the encouragement of David Braly, who taught them separately at Auburn University School of Architecture, that they met and opened up shop together.

They have “a balance of gifts,” Braly divulges. “Gray is precise; Will more laid back. Thoughtfulness versus expressiveness.” After 25 years, Meyer reports, it’s gotten to the point where they can finish each other’s drawings.

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Left: In the stairwell, porcelain buds trail from the plaster vines of David Wiseman’s site-specific commission. Right: The living room’s tubular glass chandelier by Mathieu Lehanneur echoes the wall of looping lilies of the valley, joining a Henning Strassburger painting and vintage chairs reupholstered in sheepskin.

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“Interior and architecture work best when intertwined. Our goal is that you will never feel where one ends and the other begins”

The home’s playful, spontaneous moments were selected mainly by the wife. “I would say she found every other piece,” Meyer adds—many at the Paris flea market. “She has great taste.” It was she who sought out the Matthieu Lehanneur light fixture that loops in and out of the living room ceiling—part of, versus affixed to, the architecture—and Niamh Barry’s orbital chandelier in the library. The architects would suggest professional tweaks, swapping the Lehanneur for the Barry to better suit the scale of the rooms, for instance, but see their role here as primarily one of facilitation.

Meyer likes to think about space as a movie, focusing in on a “scene” or “shot,” whereas Davis is the master planner. When they combine their responses, magic happens. Take the grand stair that links the levels—each dedicated to a different function, from the ground-floor foyer and eat-in kitchen to the living level, then to the floor-through master suite, the kids’ sleeping quarters, a media and playroom, and finally the rooftop patio. Smaller staircases sprout off the main one like spider plants, wending to the butler’s pantry and the subterranean recreation zone. Curry was on-site as the plasterers fabricated the stair, sometimes tracing a pencil over the banister to show where a few millimeters could be carved away or built up to result in the most pleasing sightlines. Beside the staircase is the magnum opus, a David Wiseman commission of plaster lily-of-the-valley shoots that uncoil across the wall, as though the home’s classical trim had absconded from orderly shadow-box formation to grow wild, each tendril terminating in bellshape porcelain buds. (A similar design embellishes the ceiling of Peter Marino’s Dior flagship in Shanghai.)

Top: The metallic discs of Jack Pierson’s Silence flutter in the foyer. Bottom: Tracey Emin neon art lights the way from the street-front living room to the rear-facing library.

Opposite: In the living room as throughout, walls are painted in a subtle crosshatch texture, lending depth; the client found the marble fireplace surround and the sofa at a Paris antique shop.

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In order not to detract from the installation, a chandelier that would puddle on the double-height foyer’s floor was nixed in favor of a square swath of backlit stretched ceiling that reads like a James Turrell Skyspace. “Restraint,” Meyer observes, “is an exercise in confidence.” That is not to say there’s no room for whimsy. In the kitchen, Nika Zupanc’s handblown-glass Cherry pendant—another client find—throws funhouse mirror reflections above the island, the literal maraschino on top.

PROJECT TEAM JOSH SUCKLE: MEYER DAVIS STUDIO. COSTA ARCHITECTURE & ENGINEERING: ARCHITECT OF RECORD. SILMAN: STRUCTURAL ENGINEER. ROSINI ENGINEERING: MEP, CIVIL ENGINEER. CLASSIC WOODWORK: WOODWORK. CERTIFIED CONSTRUCTION: GENERAL CONTRACTOR. PROJECT SOURCES FROM FRONT NIKA ZUPANC THROUGH QEEBOO: PENDANT FIXTURE (KITCHEN). WEVER & DUCRÉ: SCONCES (FOYER). NATHAN LITERA: CUSTOM CONSOLE (FOYER); ROUND BRASS TABLES, BENCH (LIVING ROOM). MATHIEU LEHANNEUR THROUGH CARPENTER’S WORKSHOP: CHANDELIER (LIVING ROOM). E15: TRAY TABLE. JONAS WORKROOM: CUSTOM GRAY SOFA (LIVING ROOM); CUSTOM BANQUETTE (LIBRARY).

ZEN GENERAL: CUSTOM HEADBOARD (BEDROOM), CUSTOM WALL PANELING (READING NOOK).

ULTRASUEDE: SOFA FABRIC (READING NOOK). IPSO FACTO: SCONCES. NIAMH BARRY: CHANDELIER (LIBRARY). TODD MERRILL STUDIO: CUSTOM SECTIONAL. WORKSTEAD: LAMP. CHEN CHEN & KAI WILLIAMS THROUGH THE FUTURE PERFECT: MAGAZINE RACK.

Top: The limestone facade has streamlined neoclassical details. Bottom: Louis Weisdorf pendants flank the third-floor master suite’s bed.

Opposite top: Ultrasuede upholsters a built-in reading nook in the master suite, which boasts hidden cabinets for books. Opposite bottom: A bronze chandelier by Niamh Barry surveys a custom crushed-velvet sectional in the walnut-paneled library.

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shaker heights Atop a cliff in earthquake-prone Chile, +Arquitectos and Gubbins Polidura Arquitectos defy the seismic odds with a light-boned vacation pavilion text: michael snyder photography: roland halbe

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For the last 30 years, Chile’s central coast has been a locus of invention for one of South America’s most vibrant architectural scenes, its rocky cliffs studded with sober Modernist boxes or hulking Brutalist masses of unpolished concrete: structures that confront Chile’s seismic instability with a monolithic intensity all their own. Those houses, most built in the decades since the fall of Chile’s ruthless, 20year military dictatorship in 1992, are as stoic, sturdy, and discreet as Chileans themselves— steady objects in an unsteady landscape.

But when Alex Brahm, founding partner of +Arquitectos, and Antonio Polidura, founding partner of Gubbins Polidura Arquitectos, received a joint commission for a weekend retreat near the seaside community of Zapallar, they decided not to build a Chilean house at all.

Instead, the architects looked to the sinuous curves and ethereal lightness in the work of Brazilian master Oscar Niemeyer. “Compared to Brazilians, we Chileans are more introverted, more austere,” Brahm reasons. “This house is happier, more exuberant, than what you would normally build in Chile. It has more of a sense of humor, less gravity.”

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it happens—the idea they should collaborate came from the client, who had developed projects with each of the architects separately and thought that Polidura’s deep experience in designing single-family homes would prove an asset on this assignment.

Built on a rocky perch that drops precipitously into the frigid, roiling Pacific, the house first appears as a low, clover-shape pavilion, its curved glass walls hanging from a concrete-slab roof paved with a pale gravel of crushed seashells. Irregularly shaped pavers of charcoalgray basalt, quarried in the nearby village of La Ligua and laid piece-by-piece by a local stonemason, extend from garden pathways through the glass walls and into the pavilion’s interior, all but erasing the division between indoors and out.

Housing all the public spaces—living, dining, and kitchen areas, each occupying one of the clover’s leaves—the pavilion is, as Brahm puts it, “a habitable shadow that weighs very, very little on the landscape.” Below the pavilion, and invisible except from the sea itself, the 4,520-square-foot house’s private zones—four bedrooms, five bathrooms, and a playroom for the family’s three children—occupy a concrete bunker partly sunk into the cliff.

It’s not a typical approach to the problem of Chile’s constant, occasionally devastating, earthquakes, but like most Chilean houses,

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Previous spread: Surrounded by glass walls, the cliff-top pavilion’s sunken dining area provides unobstructed views of central Chile’s wild, romantic coastline.

Top left: The clover-leaf-shape pavilion channels Oscar Niemeyer’s curvy concrete-and-glass residential work. Top right: The concrete-slab roof is supported by 21 steel columns around its periphery. Bottom: The living area’s sunken conversation pit, custom built-in seating, and suspended steel fireplace exude a Swinging Sixties nonchalance.

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Top, from left: The custom spiral stair comprises slabs of white-stained plywood. The master bathroom’s sunken tub overlooks the garden and Pacific Ocean.

Bottom, from left: An exterior stair slices through the upper terrace to descend to the rocky shore. A mirror above the master bath custom vanity extends the view to infinity.

Opposite: Flooded with light from an oculus in the roof slab, the sculptural stair connects the pavilion’s public areas to the lower-level private quarters.

its form is nonetheless defined by the special challenges presented by the country’s exceptional seismicity. “The pedestal below is typically Chilean, with lots of strong walls to withstand the earthquakes,” Polidura says. “But upstairs we wanted to make something really light and transparent, without diagonal beams, and to do that we had to make the structure as low to the ground as possible.” Hence the openplan pavilion’s roof floats on 21 steel columns a mere 7 ½ feet tall. To create more headroom, the architects sunk circular living, dining, and kitchen areas up to 2 feet into the floor, outfitting each pit with custom built-in furniture. The only objects taking up vertical space are a set of Isamu Noguchi hanging paper lanterns and a suspended steel fireplace.

“The low ceilings have an interesting effect,” Brahm reports. “When you’re inside the house, the delicate slab sits right over your head, directing your focus completely to the horizon.

And from outside, the whole structure seems transparent because you can’t even see the furniture—not a single object blocks your view.”

Under an oculus at the center of the lightfilled pavilion, a graceful spiral stair leads down to the enclosed private spaces below.

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“This house is happier, more exuberant, than what you normally build in Chile”

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Top left: Partly embedded in the cliff, the bunkerlike concrete base houses bedrooms and a kids’ play area. Top right: The same locally quarried basalt that paves the pavilion’s interior is used for the garden’s extensive terracing and stonework. Bottom: To gain headroom, the custom circular kitchen is sunk almost 2 feet below the main floor level.

Compared to the public floor, whose modish curves and sunken pits are a cheerful, witty throwback to 1960s futurism, the lower level is almost monastic: the Brazilian exuberance above rests on a foundation of Chilean functionalism. “We wanted the downstairs to feel more like a cave than a conventional house,” Brahm says, “as if it was part of the rock itself.”

That doesn’t mean dark or oppressive, however. In the master bathroom—essentially a long, squared-off tube oriented toward the ocean— a wall of glass doors fronting a shower and sauna is reflected in a 20-foot-long mirror over twin sinks, expanding the view through the single square window into something like infinity. A square bathtub embedded in the floor beneath the window echoes the sunkenroom strategy upstairs: the careful lowering of architectual elements out of the line of sight.

Whereas the pavilion’s sinuous glass curtain brings the outside in, the rectangular windows in the downstairs rooms frame the views, transforming them into artworks, “almost like paintings of the sea,” as Brahm puts it.

For all its intelligence and creativity, the house is also “a sort of caprice,” Brahm readily admits. “The form is sensual and sinuous, but it

doesn’t have a particularly deep architectural foundation.” Yet that sensuality has its own kind of logic. Rather than taking the route of Chile’s concrete-and-glass boxes, which seem to assume the simplest solution must be the best one, Brahm and Polidura have answered the problems posed by the rugged Chilean Pacific differently: “If it’s possible,” they say, “why not do it?”

PROJECT TEAM HERNÁN FOURNIES: ARCHITECTURAL CONSULTANT. JUAN GRIMM: LANDSCAPING CONSULTANT. GREENE DURING ILUMINACION + LUXIA LIGHTING: LIGHTING CONSULTANT. BMING INGENIEROS: STRUCTURAL ENGINEER. DANIEL ALEMPARTE: GENERAL CONTRACTOR. PROJECT SOURCES FROM FRONT VITRA: PENDANT FIXTURES, FLOOR LAMP (DINING ROOM). INTERDESIGN THROUGH SANTA & COLE: FLOOR LAMPS (LIVING ROOM, MASTER BATHROOM). KOHLER CO.: TUB, TUB FITTINGS, SINK, SINK FITTINGS (MASTER BATHROOM), FAUCET (KITCHEN). THROUGHOUT PROIMAGEN: CUSTOM BUILT-IN FURNISHINGS AND STAIRCASE. SILENT GLISS THROUGH A-CERO: CURTAIN RAILS. ANODITE THROUGH SCHÜCO: WINDOWS, DOORS. BUDNIK: FLOORING.

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marshmallow modern Lauren Rottet brings new life—her own—to a George Nelson beach house in Montauk, New York text: edie cohen photography: eric laignel

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Born, bred, and based in Texas, Lauren Rottet wields a global sphere of influence. The Hall of Famer and founding principal of Houston’s Rottet Studio—which now has offices in Los Angeles, New York, and Shanghai—is a self-described workaholic. Her projects and products have garnered innumerable awards. Yet even this chronic overachiever needs a place to chill now and then.

Rottet had been looking for a retreat, particularly a place to escape Houston’s horrific summer heat, for years. Initial efforts focused on California but switched to New York after she paid a lengthy visit to the East Hampton home of firm cofounding principal David Davis and discovered the oceanside charms of an area totally new to her. While there, she was indulging in a favorite pastime—perusing local real estate listings—when out jumped a potential gem: a house by George Nelson and his partner Gordon Chadwick.

“It was in Montauk, a place I’d never been,” Rottet recalls. “I called the agent, went to visit, and fell in love.”

Who wouldn’t? Along with its prime location—a one-acre hilltop site with watery views of Lake Montauk, Big Reed Pond, Long Island Sound, and the Atlantic Ocean—

the shingle-clad residence had an intriguing history. Built in 1962 for Rudolf and Ethel Johnson, the house had been so altered over the years that by 1989 the Johnsons’ son decided to recreate the original design—minus a breezeway—on a nearby lot. He not only followed the extant plans and specifications but also hired the contractor his parents had used 30 years earlier. Subsequently, the property passed into the hands of two New York artists. Then Rottet came along: “I introduced myself to Montauk by buying a house,” she quips.

The two-story structure is a curious composition of hexagonal volumes, some pure, some truncated. Even the means of entry are non-standard. The driveway ducks under a bridge attached like a flying buttress to one side of the house. This shingle-clad overpass leads to the kitchen door on the second floor. Beneath it, the front door opens directly into a hexagon-shape, multipurpose space—entry gallery, stair hall, and sitting 116

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Previous spread: In the upstairs living room, a Kiki Smith self-portrait keeps company with George Nelson and Irving Harper’s iconic Marshmallow sofa, while built-in banquettes original to the house line niches.

Clockwise from top: Rottet installed the entry gallery’s sliding glass doors to allow a view of the swimming pool, which she also put in. French vintage acrylic chairs complement the living room’s original cedar shingles and stone fireplace. The ramp leads to the second-floor kitchen door.

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Above: Thanks to a Murphy bed, the ground-floor family room doubles as a second guest suite.

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“I introduced myself to Montauk by buying a George Nelson and Gordon Chadwick house”

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Top, from left: The driveway to the garage passes under the ramp. Skylights keep the hallway bright. Center, from left: The dining room’s Nelson wall clock is original. The rope tapestry is by Alexander Calder. Nelson’s built-in gridded screen flanks the dining room.

Bottom, from left: A Larry Poons painting hangs in the stairwell. Signage letters and a Raymond Loewy cabinet share a niche in the entry gallery. The hallway’s built-in cabinetry is part of Nelson and Chadwick’s design.

area—with a wall of sliding glass doors overlooking the swimming pool, both Rottet additions. The entry is flanked on one side by a guest suite, formerly a workshop with an oil tank, and on the other by the family room, which can also accommodate overnighters thanks to a sizable Murphy bed.

Opposite: An Andrew Brischler work hangs over Rooms are contiguous, connected via immediate adjacenthe master bedroom’s cerused-oak headboard. cies rather than corridors. The same program applies to the upstairs spaces—kitchen, master suite, and living and dining rooms—with the exception of the latter two, which are linked by a broad skylit hallway. With no dead corners and plenty of light, the floor plan is, as Rottet puts it, “crazy efficient,” making the 3,280-square-foot house seem significantly larger.

“The house was built super solid,” Rottet continues. It lacks a basement, which was a major problem when it came to installing air conditioning and upgrading other systems (that oil tank), “but we figured it out.” Otherwise, little more work was necessary save replacing a few cedar shingles—outside, of course, but also inside, where they are used to striking effect on some ceilings and columns. New oak flooring was installed in the master bedroom and the downstairs guest room, the boards laid out in patterns echoing the geometry of the particular space. The original interior stonework—flagstone flooring on much of the lower level, massive stone fireplaces in the family room and living room above—was in great shape and needed no attention.

Furnishing the place was a matter of today’s architect blending her vision with that of midcentury masters Nelson and Chadwick who preceded her. The undertaking started with a piece of advice from Interior Design editor in chief Cindy Allen: “You’re not going to go out and just buy things,” Rottet recalls her saying. “You have to go vintage.” Sage words, which she heeded.

Fortunately, some covetable pieces came with the house. Could there be any item more associated with Nelson than the Marshmallow sofa, a 1956 collaboration with Irving Harper? Well, it was there and now sits in one of the living room’s full-height bay windows. The built-in banquettes lining the room’s other bays are also original, as are the dining room’s cool floor-to-ceiling screen and built-in shelving.

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As for shopping, Rottet soon became an expert on the vintage stores in Montauk and surrounding towns. Periodappropriate finds include a quartet of French circa-1970 acrylic swivel chairs for the living room; a Paul McCobb solid-surfacing and lacquered credenza for the dining room; and a Raymond Loewy chrome, lacquer, and plastic cabinet for the entry gallery. Supplementing these treasures are several pieces of Rottet’s own creation such as the dining room’s marble-top table and mohair-covered chairs—designs spurred, she says, “by the flow of energy” in her new house, and now in production as (what else?) the Montauk Collection.

PROJECT TEAM MARISSA IACOVONI; JANE O’BRIEN DESIGN: DESIGN SUPPORT. LYCKE HOME SERVICES: PROJECT MANAGER. HERNAN TOVAR: PROJECT COORDINATOR. WARREN’S NURSERY; JAMES C. GRIMES LANDSCAPE DESIGN: LANDSCAPE CONSULTANTS. ISLAND GUNITE POOLS: POOL CONSULTANT. ERIC STRIFFLER: HARDSCAPE CONSULTANT. MARCOS MARILLO: WOODWORK. JOHN WARD PLUMBING & HEATING; NRC ELECTRICAL CONTRACTING; MARSHALL & SONS FUEL OIL: MEP. PLUM BUILDERS: GENERAL CONTRACTOR. PROJECT SOURCES LIVING ROOM ROTTET COLLECTION: SQUARE AND LONG COFFEE TABLES, FIRE SCREEN. THROUGH NEO STUDIO: VINTAGE ACRYLIC CHAIRS. ENTRY GALLERY ROTTET COLLECTION: RATTAN SETTEE. HOMENATURE: ROUND TABLE, LOW STOOLS. FAMILY ROOM MONC XIII: OTTOMAN. THROUGH NEO STUDIO: VINTAGE RATTAN CHAISE. AT 1STDIBS: VINTAGE COFFEE TABLE. ROTTET COLLECTION: FIRE SCREEN. THROUGH LYNN GOODE VINTAGE FURNITURE + DECORATIVE ARTS: VINTAGE CHANDELIER. UPSTAIRS HALLWAY CARL AUBÖCK THROUGH MONC XIII: PAPERWEIGHTS. GARAGE EXTERIOR GIANT: BICYCLE. SURFTECH: PADDLEBOARD. DINING ROOM AND STAIR LANDING ROTTET COLLECTION: TABLE, CHAIRS. THROUGH JOHN SALIBELLO: VINTAGE BENCH. MASTER BEDROOM ROTTET COLLECTION: BED, NIGHTSTANDS. THROUGH JOHN SALIBELLO: VINTAGE LAMP. RH: BED LINENS. GUEST BEDROOM ROTTET COLLECTION: CREDENZA. HARRI KOSKINEN THROUGH LUMINAIRE: BEDSIDE LAMP. ARTEMIDE: TABLE LAMP. SWIMMING POOL KETTAL: TABLE, CHAIRS, LOUNGE CHAIRS. THROUGHOUT SHEHADI COMMERCIAL FLOORING; BRILLIANT SHINE FLOORS: WOOD & PORCELAIN FLOORING.

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Clockwise from top: Maritime signal flags stitched on canvas enliven the guest bedroom, formerly a workshop with an oil tank. Rottet’s acrylic-base tables and chairs populate the dining room, which opens onto the stair landing. Tables and chairs by Patricia Urquiola border the 40-by-12-foot saltwater pool.

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altered perspective Bureau d’Architecture Marc Corbiau gives a new view to an artist’s residence and studio in Sint-Genesius-Rode, Belgium text: rebecca dalzell photography: mireille roobaert/photofoyer 124

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“Sophie wanted to create an

Previous spread: At artist Sophie Cauvin’s Belgium residence, the sculpture studio doubles as an exhibition space.

Top left: A skylight carries natural illumination through the stairwell to the basement ceramics studio. Top right: Cauvin used leftover pieces of stone to make an outdoor sculpture.

Bottom left: Valser quartzite clads the exterior. Bottom right: A Piero Lissoni sofa, z1957 rosewood Hans Brattrud lounge, cowhide carpet, and cast-iron fireplace form the living area, with kitchen visible at rear.

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Marc Corbiau is the king of the white cube in his native Belgium. In affluent Brussels suburbs, a Corbiau home carries a certain cachet, denoting art-collecting residents who value the clean lines and pure forms of his spare, roomy interiors. “My designs are oriented toward art,” Corbiau affirms. The Bureau d’Architecture Marc Corbiau principal has been a collector himself for 50 years, acquiring works by Donald Judd, Richard Serra, and Robert Mangold, and his buildings are similarly minimalist.

They draw the eye toward light and nature.

Never, though, had Corbiau created a studio for a working artist, whose inherent messiness might seem at odds with his pristine constructions. Belgian painter and sculptor Sophie Cauvin has enlisted him to do so twice. The first project was a workshop adjacent to her previous home. But when she found a bucolic plot of land nearby, in Sint-Genesius-Rode, she asked Corbiau to design an entire creative retreat. Cauvin, who met Corbiau through the art world 20 years ago, had a clear vision for the 10,000-square-foot studio and residence. “She wanted to create an ideal place, in terms of architecture and landscape, so her work could flourish,” Corbiau recalls. “It would encompass a vast space to paint in, separate but visible from another for sculpture, and a basement-level space for ceramics.”

Cauvin’s mixed-media artworks need both ample square footage and a connection to the outdoors.

She has buckets of materials collected from around the world—sand, soil, ash, minerals—which she mixes with water and lathers on canvases with a broom. Her earthy, textured pieces reflect on geology and our place in the universe—the kind of heady topics that require an artist to unplug.

ideal place, in terms of architecture and landscape, so her artwork could flourish”

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Though close to Brussels, the property feels isolated, ringed with evergreens and no buildings in sight. When landscape architect Piet Blanckaert first saw the site, it was largely overgrown and planted with nondescript shrubs, but had one standout quality: a magnificent 150-year-old red beech tree. “A big one like that is quite rare in Belgium,” says Blanckaert. “It’s planted on a little hill, which makes it grow twice as fast because the water runs off. The roots come to the surface like a sculpture.”

Blanckaert, Corbiau, and Cauvin, who worked closely together throughout the two-year process, agreed from the start to orient the structure around the beech. Blanckaert cleared out the land around it to make a lawn with the tree and a koi pond at its center. Floor-to-ceiling windows in the painting studio and living area face the verdant expanse. Other parts of the grounds take the form of Japanese-style gardens, with Belgian bluestones and clipped hedges. The sculpture studio, where Cauvin also hosts events and exhibitions, opens onto a Zenlike terrace shaded by oak, medlar, and box trees. For Cauvin, the lawn and Japanese gardens each form a discrete microcosm, offering unique perspectives into the natural world.

Three UV-coated skylights filter northern light into the studio spaces, even down through a stairwell to the ceramics area. “The entire design is based on light,” Corbiau explains. “There’s no point of shadow in the studio—all is uniform—which is crucial for Sophie’s work.” He also considered circulation and sight lines, making distinct spaces that flow into one another and frame views of the gardens. Visitors enter directly into the studio and turn left for painting or right for sculpture; the open foyer creates a vista across the vast cementfloored rooms. A three-sided open gas fireplace separates the painting studio from the living and dining area, where interior designer Vincent Bruyninckx, another project collaborator, deployed a Piero Lissoni sofa and Hans Brattrud chair that sit on a cowhide carpet.

Cauvin, attuned to materiality given the tactility of her work, chose Valser quartzite for the exterior and some interior walls. “It’s the stone that Peter Zumthor used for his thermal baths in Vals, Switzerland,” Corbiau notes. “Sophie wanted something that felt timeless and soothing.” Cut into horizontal 128

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Opposite top: The entrance opens into the painting and sculpture studios. Opposite bottom: The sculpture studio connects to a Zen garden.

Top: In the upstairs bathroom, the walls, tub, and sink are made of raw and sanded Valser quartzite. Bottom left: A native red beech stands beside a koi pond on the lawn outside the painting studio. Bottom right. An oak headboard anchors the master bedroom.

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Azalea japonicas, ivy, and yew bushes fill the Zen garden.

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Top left: A giant bluestone stands sentinel at the main entrance. Top right: The studio is floored in cement resin embedded with marble dust. Bottom left: In the basement, a library contains Cauvin’s large art-book collection. Bottom right: Sand and minerals from around the world fill buckets along the wall of the painting studio.

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strips, the stone shimmers with silver mica and white quartz. From afar, the structure looks like a Brutalist monolith, but up close, there’s texture and warmth. The quartzite also extends indoors, cladding much of the serene upstairs residence, which includes a spalike bathroom, massage room, and bedroom. In the bath, it’s kept rough on the walls, but sanded down for the sink, vanity, and tub.

Cauvin took leftover stone strips and made a circular sculpture on the lawn.

For Corbiau, who has visited countless studios over the years, the work was pure pleasure. “It was a bijou of a project,” says Corbiau. “It was a dream for me to design a grand atelier.” Best of all, he adds, Cauvin is happy there and shares the space with others. It’s an open studio in every sense of the word.

PROJECT TEAM VINCENT BRUYNINCKX: INTERIOR DESIGN, PROJECT DESIGN. PIET BLANCKAERT: LANDSCAPE CONSULTANT. DIMENSION LUMIÈRE: LIGHTING CONSULTANT. STREAM SERVICE: AUDIOVISUAL. MARLIÈRE: WOODWORK. TRUFFER AG: STONE SUPPLIER. SOCATRA: GENERAL CONTRACTOR. PROJECT SOURCES FROM FRONT AT CHAPES: FLOORING (STUDIO). ERCO: LIGHTING. DELTA LIGHT: LIGHTING (LIVING ROOM). DE PUYDT HAARDEN: FIREPLACE. LIVING DIVANI: SOFA. LIMITED EDITION: CARPET. CEADESIGN: SINK FITTINGS.

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making it new

In the hands of five Japanese artists, traditional craft materials and techniques take a contemporary turn text: daniella ohad See page 140 for more on bamboo artist Tanabe Chikuunsai IV.

INCREDIBLE FILMS

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Nakatomi Hajime

Clockwise from top left: Nakatomi Hajime handcrafts bamboo in his studio. A work in progress. Like many of his pieces, Prism Ellipse, 2014, incorporates madake bamboo and rattan. The ribbonlike Frill, 2020, silhouetted in a window. A detail of Tension 01, 2017, shows Nakatomi’s exquisite craftsmanship.

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COURTESY OF TAI MODERN

If Japanese traditional bamboo work has moved from being a folk craft into a recognized contemporary art form, then Nakatomi Hajime (b. 1974) is one of the leaders of the evolution.

Bamboo has a special place in the culture and rituals of Japan, symbolizing vitality, prosperity, and courage. For centuries, the country’s bamboo artisans have crafted exquisite baskets and other everyday utensils using techniques passed down from generation to generation.

The work Nakatomi produces in the southern city of Taketa couldn’t look more different than those conventional objects, however. His language is singular: geometric, architectural, almost modernist. He achieves daring forms by approaching the medium with reverence but also with a fresh mindset that’s not afraid to experiment with the unknown, employ unconventional methods, and adopt new ecofriendly dyes and lacquers. Nakatomi’s ingenious and sophisticated work straddles the line between the traditional and the contemporary, between art and craft. taimodern.com

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“I wanted to see how far I could push bamboo, to maximize its power and mystery”

TOP: COURTESY OF TAI MODERN; BOTTOM: COURTESY OF THE ARTIST

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Hashimoto Machiko

From left: Ceramicist Hashimoto Machiko with a characteristic piece in her Kyoto studio. Working with semi-porcelain (also known as ironstone), Hashimoto creates large vessels like Season–Pastel, 2019, that evoke blossoms.

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FROM LEFT: COURTESY OF THE ARTIST; COURTESY OF SOKYO GALLERY

A native of Kyoto, ceramicist Hashimoto Machiko (b. 1986) creates sculptural vessels that look like enormous blue-and-white flowers. Working at her home studio in the old imperial city, she uses two fundamental materials: semi-porcelain (commonly known as ironstone) and cobalt-oxide glaze. For her, blue not only is a favorite color but also symbolizes aspects of life: water, sky, and ocean. In her ceramic objects, Hashimoto recreates nature, not in a realistic way—these are not delicate blossoms—but as an abstract, imaginative, and substantial presence. While relying on the Japanese tradition of blue-andwhite porcelain, her language is personal, idiosyncratic, and generative. A graduate of Kyoto Saga University of Arts, she produces powerful, expressive work that is labor intensive. Carved inside and out, and fired twice, each giant bloom is unique and takes months to complete. Most remarkably, Hashimoto manages to imbue her sculptures with a palpable sense of both serene calm and furious motion. gallery-sokyo.jp

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CLOCKWISE FROM TOP RIGHT: DAIKI NAKAMURA; COURTESY OF THE ARTIST; COURTESY OF SOKYO GALLERY; COURTESY OF THE ARTIST

Kawai Kazuhito Clay is but one medium among many Kawai Kazuhito (b. 1984) utilizes in his highly distinctive work. His creations are odd and edgy, yet so compelling that when he exhibited them at Design Miami for the first time last December, they immediately captured the attention of collectors. After graduating from London’s Chelsea College of Arts in 2007, Kawai completed his studies at Kasama College of Ceramic Art in his home prefecture of Ibaraki, where he currently lives and works. He belongs to a generation of young artists who began with conventional ceramic craft but have turned their backs on many wabi-sabi concepts—simplicity, economy, modesty—to produce bright-hued, dysfunctional objects with powerfully eruptive surfaces. Combining sensuality with vivid color, Kawai’s work reflects a contemporary interest in the aesthetics of the grotesque, which is explored through an exceptional approach to materiality. Resembling flamboyantly irregular candy, his pieces may look like fun, but they incorporate covert critiques of pop culture, fashion, and society. gallery-sokyo.jp Clockwise from top right: Cutting-edge ceramicist Kawai Kazuhito with a typically powerful work. Titled Hiroshi Nagai and City Pop, 2020, this piece comments on popular culture. Celebrity in the contemporary performing arts is referenced in A Friend of Mine Resembles Yuja Wang, 2019. Brilliant color floods Cafe AYA, 2019.

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In creating The Gate, a site-specific installation at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2017, Tanabe Chikuunsai IV (b. 1973) helped bring contemporary Japanese bamboo artistry, which infuses traditional craft with radical innovation, to an international audience. As the fourth generation in a long line of distinguished bamboo artisans—previously known as Tanabe Shochiku, he was bestowed with the family’s artist-name Chikuunsai, meaning “master of the bamboo clouds,” three years ago—he is acutely aware of the central place the spirit of tradition holds when working with the timehonored material today. A graduate of the Tokyo University of the Arts, he trained in the bamboo crafts at a special school on the island of Kyushu, before setting up a studio in Sakai, his hometown.

Tanabe’s pieces cross the boundaries between sculpture and architecture, while his dramatic, organic, twisted forms have become an evocative trademark. taimodern.com

Clockwise from top right: Godai, 2019, is partly made of bamboo root.

Tanabe Chikuunsai IV constructing Connection-Origin, 2019, in his studio.

Black bamboo forms the sculptural Godai (Wind), 2018. A solo exhibition at TAI Modern, Santa Fe, New Mexico, in 2019. The artist stands beside Connection-Origin at the exhibition. As its name suggests, Disappear VIII, 2019, has an ethereal, weightless quality.

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CLOCKWISE FROM BOTTOM LEFT: TADAYUKI MINAMOTO (2); INCREDIBLE FILMS

Tanabe Chikuunsai IV

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“The foundation of my artistry comes from the spirit of tea ceremony and the art of ikebana”

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: TADAYUKI MINAMOTO; GARY MANKUS (2)

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Fukumoto Shihoko

Clockwise from top left: Textile artist Fukumoto Shihoko in her Kyoto studio. Tsushima–X, 2012, incorporates an old kimono from Tsushima Island. Made of ramie, Echigo-I, 2012, is named for the place the textile was woven. The title Okusozakkuri–II, 2009, refers to the hemp workcoat from which it is constructed. Tearoom installations in a solo Fukumoto exhibition at the Musée de Somé Seiryu, Kyoto, in 2010.

A detail of a hemp work, Ungen, 2019, shows the artist’s mastery of indigo-dye techniques.

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TANAKA KOTARO

With works in the permanent collections of some of the world’s finest museums, Fukumoto Shihoko (b. 1945) is one of Japan’s leading fiber artists. Indigo—among the few blue dyes found in nature—is her magically rich and deep medium.

The plant-derived color arrived in Japan in the eighth century and has been used ever since in table linens, clothing, and everyday objects, becoming an integral part of the country’s craft repertoire. Kyoto-based Fukumoto, who discovered indigo at 30, uses shibori, the ancient resist-dyeing technique, to produce abstract, conceptual works of textile art. Since the 1970s, she has been developing her voice as an artist connected to Japanese identity, one who is interested in culture, history, and the rediscovery of old or extinct textile production and processing methods. Her “canvases” are rare fabrics and vintage kimonos woven of linen and hemp, which she finds in tiny shops all over the country. Fukumoto deconstructs those old garments, immerses them in luminous indigo dyes, and then reconstructs them into remarkable wall tapestries that offer the viewer a quietly intense, almost mystical experience. gallery-sokyo.jp

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“I am influenced by the tradition and culture of Kyoto — and the color of indigo, which is associated with the rivers, water, and ocean of Japan”

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: COURTESY OF ARTCOURT GALLERY, OSAKA; OMOTE NOBUTADA; KAWABE TOSHIHARU; HATAKEYAMA TAKASHI

interiordesign.net/japanesecraft20 for more contemporary Japanese artisans

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lap of luxury Studio Arthur Casas reinvents a storied New York brownstone for tech-forward living text: tania menai photography: filippo bamberghi

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Casas means houses in the poetic language of Portuguese. The simplicity and beauty of this word could not be a more suitable surname for a Brazilian architect known for inviting nature in and showering rooms with daylight. São Paulo–based Arthur Casas, an Interior Design Hall of Fame member whose global portfolio includes U.S. projects from Miami to Malibu, is the name behind a four-year gut renovation that transformed the interior of an Upper West Side brownstone neighboring Central Park into a family home where spaces merge and an indoor pool feels like a spa.

While Casas gave the 6,200-square-foot property a second life, installing fullheight glass at the back and an elevator to connect all six floors, among other improvements, the landmarked facade remains untouched. “Beloved cities like London, Paris, New York, and Rio de Janeiro get their charm from their architecture, which reflects a mix of different periods,” the Studio Arthur Casas founder notes.

“I adore and respect these buildings.”

Along with teammate Tamy Tutihashi, the firm’s international projects manager, Casas collaborated closely with the homeowners, a family of four who had lived in part of the brownstone before acquiring the whole building about five years ago.

Listening to clients is the core of Casas’ work. “I believe the individual is the center of architecture,” he says. Here, the couple’s vision was precise: They craved a light palette that would remind them of their native Middle East, and they desired abundant built-ins that would hide their books and belongings. “The clients are

Previous spread: The brownstone’s basementlevel pool is sheathed in honed Avario limestone; lighting coves enhance the linear spatial geometry, a strategy replicated throughout the residence.

Top: Between the first-floor dining and living rooms is a bar with Dekton countertop. Center: In the dining room, Marina chairs by Jorge Zalszupin surround a steel Esquadro table by Arthur Casas and Primo Vidros; above hangs a Pelle Designs pendant. Bottom: Black granite surrounds the living room hearth, set into built-in cabinetry in white oak.

Opposite: Casas designed the living room’s Ela sofa and custom aluminum centerpiece, which join Martin Eisler’s Reversível armchair from the 1950s.

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very organized, so we created a language: clean and sealed,” Tutihashi explains.

The designers laid out the long-andnarrow space in a way that reflects the family’s lifestyle and allocated the main rooms to the extremities to maximize their access to natural light. Since the wife works from home, they placed her office near the garden-level entrance. In the rear of that floor, family life happens around the kitchen that faces the back yard through floor-to-ceiling glass. One flight up, on the first floor, Casas created a more formal dining room and a living area but connected them visually to the family zones below by way of an overlook. Bedrooms for the couple’s two teenagers as well as a study are on the second floor, the master suite comprises the third, and at the top is a roof deck and media room/hangout.

The architects used primarily light oak for woodwork throughout and limestone for flooring in the garden level and basement. “The materials’ sandlike colors

bring coziness to the home, especially during colder days,” Tutihashi says. For Casas, the kitchen was a first: His clients asked for a black space, something unusual in his native Brazil. Inky cabinetry and countertops, all made of Dekton, are contrasted with strategic swaths of off-white.

Another novelty, purchased by the techsavvy homeowners, was a set of two under-counter coffee makers that resemble a slim faucet. One is in the kitchen; the other is in the dining room–adjacent bar, which features a collage-like backsplash of bush-hammered stone. Catapulting this brownstone firmly into the Jetsons

Opposite: A sauna anchors one end of the pool, illuminated by a skylight that funnels sunshine from the back yard.

Top: The pool’s powder room pairs white walnut slats with a limestone sink. Center: In the topfloor bathroom is a wall-mounted metal sink basin. Bottom: The garden-level family zone includes a custom kitchen with black-lacquered metal cabinets.

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Top: The garden-level dining area features Massimo Castagna Strip chairs and a Pequiรก slabwood table by Cristiano do Valle for Toro Brasil.

Left: The landmarked brownstone facade was left unaltered.

Right: A Pierre Paulin chair from the 1970s graces the master suite, with a custom straw headboard

by Brazilian artisan Nani Chinellato; a Corian soaking tub distinguishes the open bath.

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stratosphere, the house is entirely automated by a smart-home system. Several iPads are installed on the walls, there’s a built-in theater in the top-floor media room, the pool cover slides open with the touch of a button, and a flush-to-the-wall outlet/switch system was created exclusively for the project.

Casas considers a house holistically and leads his team to oversee every detail of it, from door handles to furniture. Pieces of his own design here include a custom steel dining table and the living room’s curvaceous sofa. During the course of the project, the wife fell in love with Brazilian furniture. “She flew to Brazil, where she spent five days with us picking the best options,” Casas explains.

(Among the highlights: a set of Jorge Zalszupin Marina dining chairs.) Casas is also fond of sourcing furniture locally.

“New York has wonderful stores, and I love buying vintage pieces in the U.S.,” the designer enthuses.

For Casas, the 13-yard indoor pool, a request from the athletic husband, is a highlight of the project. It was equally the most challenging, courtesy of a complicated and protracted excavation, but well worth the wait. The private refuge with sauna and lounge has a skylight that admits rays of sunshine and summarizes Casas’s idea of architecture: “Houses and buildings not only shelter our bodies and actions,” he concludes, “they also shelter our dreams, memories, and desires.”

PROJECT TEAM NATALIA VALENTE, RAISSA FURLAN, VICTORIA CHAVES, PAULINA TABET, ANDRÉ HONDA: STUDIO ARTHUR CASAS. ILLUMINATION STRATEGIC DESIGN: LIGHTING CONSULTANT. PROJECT SOURCES POOL INALCO: TILE. DINING ROOM PRIMO VIDROS: TABLE. LOJA TEO: CHAIRS. PELLE DESIGNS: PENDANT. LIVING ROOM HERANÇA CULTURAL: ARMCHAIR, COFFEE TABLE. ETEL: CURVED SOFA. FLEXFORM: SECTIONAL. ESPASSO: VINTAGE LAMP. STUDIO OBJETO: TABLE CENTERPIECE. KITCHEN NYLOFT: CUSTOM KITCHEN. KOHLER: SINK, SINK FITTINGS. DEKTON: SOLID SURFACING. FAMILY ROOM HENGE: CHAIRS. TORA BRASIL: TABLE. CASAS EDIÇÕES: VINTAGE TABLE LAMP. MASTER SUITE BOFFI: BATHTUB. POLTRONA FRAU: DRESSING TABLE, STOOL. THROUGH 1STDIBS: VINTAGE LOUNGE. ALLIED MAKER: SCONCE. NANI CHINELLATO: CUSTOM HEADBOARD. THROUGHOUT LUTRON: AUTOMATION. BENJAMIN MOORE & CO: PAINT. SIBERIAN FLOORS: WOOD PANELING. WALKING ON WOOD: WOOD FLOORING. STONE SOURCE: LIMESTONE SUPPLIER. VITROCSA: SLIDING GLASS. ESTHEC: PANELING (POOL).

HEATILATOR: FIREPLACES. SCANOMAT: UNDER-COUNTER COFFEE MAKERS. FLORIM: CERAMICS.

“Sandlike materials and colors lend coziness, especially during colder days”

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ancient and modern In Beijing, Archstudio transforms a traditional courtyard house into a gleaming contemporary residence that still respects the past text: casey hall SPRING.20

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Previous spread: The rear courtyard is flanked by the private quarters, which include bedrooms that can be screened with slatted sliding doors. Photography: Wang Ning.

Top: The main courtyard is surrounded by a new glass-walled veranda, connecting all the public rooms. Photography: Wang Ning.

Bottom left: The first courtyard houses the restored entry gate, now the front door. Photography: Wu Qingshan. Bottom right: The veranda roof rises over the entryway, creating a moon-gate effect when viewed on axis. Photography: Wu Qingshan.

Opposite: The living room shows how the original pine post-andbeam structure blends seamlessly with the modern veranda addition. Photography: Wu Qingshan.

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The twisted maze of hutongs, or lanes, that once dominated Beijing has shrunk in recent decades.

A race to modernize the Chinese capital has meant the romance of living in single-story alleyway communities has been replaced by the practicality of residing in glass-and-steel towers replete with modern luxuries, such as indoor plumbing, which many people find hard to resist.

The concept of siheyuan, which literally translates as quadrangle but in practice is used to describe the traditional courtyard-house structure common to Beijing’s hutongs, was born in China’s Yuan Dynasty (1279–1368). Today, Beijing’s remaining courtyard dwellings tend to be either extensively renovated, to make them comfortable for modern living, or incredibly dilapidated.

The latter was the case for the Qishe courtyard house, a private residence that gets its name (qi means seven and she means house) because not only is its hutong address number seven, but also the original compound comprised a total of seven pitched-roof buildings.

When Beijing-based Archstudio first surveyed the Qishe property, the state of disrepair was daunting.

According to founder and principal architect Han Wenqiang, roofs, walls, and windows were either badly damaged or missing altogether, and the three courtyards around which the remaining walls were arranged overflowed with abandoned construction material and unkempt vegetation.

“I don’t know the full history of the property,” Han says. “It was probably built as a compound for a single extended family, but over the years it had been converted into a warren of apartments. The courtyards had obviously been unused for some time.”

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Archstudio has developed something of a specialty in renovating siheyuans, for both residential and commercial purposes, in Beijing and around the country. Though Han has obvious regard for China’s courtyard traditions, he balks when asked about a passion for “preserving” them, because their nature has always been in a state of flux. “The way siheyuans have been used throughout history has constantly changed,” he says. “Instead of turning them into tourist attractions or museums, I think it’s very important that they continue to be used. Design should be utilized to reactivate the old buildings, to create a more comfortable, convenient, and poetic living environment.”

In fact, Han did a lot to preserve Qishe’s remaining structures. He reckons 90 percent of the original materials found on-site were reused in some way. For example, a broken-down external wall as well as the three courtyards within the compound were rebuilt using the existing bricks. The pitched roofs also make use of the original gray slate tiles, a common feature in Beijing hutongs, but first the rooftops were deconstructed in order to add waterproofing and insulation—a good example of the ways in which Archstudio retains the old without sacrificing modern comforts.

Where the project diverges somewhat from the look of a traditional siheyuan is with the insertion of a continuous glass-walled veranda, a broad corridor that snakes around the courtyards, linking all the buildings while twisting and turning to accommodate several well-established trees. Supported on simple pine columns, the gently curving roof of this light-filled gallery rises in a graceful wave to form an arch over the main entry. Although Han regards this unifying structure as the most important element in his redesign, it was also the one that gave him the biggest headaches on the project, which spanned three years from conception to completion.

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Bottom: The custom table in the dining room is made of the same laminated bamboo used for the ceiling panels, doors, and window frames. Photography: Wang Ning.

Opposite top: The open kitchen can be closed off with slatted folding screens in case stir-fry-style cooking becomes smoky. Photography: Wang Ning. Opposite bottom: The roofs of the old buildings were rebuilt using the original gray tiles, while the veranda roof is finished with a smooth polymer mortar in a similar tonality. Photography: Wu Qingshan.

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“My favorite aspect of the project is the harmonious coexistence of old and new”

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The challenge came from Han and his client’s determination to utilize an unfamiliar material— laminated bamboo—not only for doors, window frames, and built-in furniture but also for the veranda ceiling panels. Lightweight but strong, the bamboo looks organic, minimalist, and modern while complementing the older, restored portions of the house. The problems arose because the panels, which needed to satisfy exacting tolerances, couldn’t be prefabricated but had to be made on-site—a slow, tedious, and error-prone process that in the end was justified by the fluidity and naturalness of the design it allowed Han to achieve.

The flowing, transparent character of the transformed, 5,400-square-foot siheyuan is immediately apparent. The glass walls offer no visual separation between the interiors and the open courtyards they surround. The most public spaces—the entry, living room, dining room, large tearoom, and kitchen—encircle the middle courtyard, a spacious rectangle with one rounded end. The more private areas—two bedrooms with adjoining bathrooms, a study, and an intimate tearoom—are clustered around the small, irregularly shaped rear courtyard, the site of three large trees. The bedrooms can be shut off from the courtyard with sliding slatted screens. The garage, various service rooms, and the rebuilt original entry gate occupy the other small courtyard, which abuts the lane.

“China’s traditional courtyard designs have always reflected the Eastern philosophy that man and nature should live in harmony together,” Han notes, adding that synchronization between indoors and outdoors was key to Qishe’s successful redevelopment. But even more, the architect prizes the way the compound blends the ancient and modern: “My favorite aspect of the project is the harmonious coexistence of the old and the new.”

Bottom: In contrast to the gray brick used underfoot in most of the indoor and outdoor spaces, wood flooring was installed in both bedrooms to create a warm effect.

Photography: Wu Qingshan.

Opposite, top from left: A ribcage of closely spaced pine beams supports the veranda’s curving roof. The bed in the master suite is made of North American black walnut.

Photography: Wang Ning. Opposite bottom: The veranda’s glass walls in the rear courtyard curve dramatically to preserve existing trees. Photography: Wu Qingshan.

PROJECT TEAM WANG TONGHUI: ARCHSTUDIO. DONG TIANHUA: LIGHTING CONSULTANT. BAMBOO ERA: STRUCTURAL ENGINEER. ZHENG BAOWEI, YU YAN, LI DONGJIE: MEP. PROJECT SOURCES FROM FRONT THROUGH TAOBAO: SEATING (INNER COURTYARD); BED (BEDROOM). THROUGHOUT SICHUAN HONGYA ZHUYUAN SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY CORP.: CUSTOM BAMBOO WORK.

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B O O K s edited by Stanley Abercrombie Into the Woods: Retreats and Dream Houses

by Philip Jodidio New York: Rizzoli, $48 288 pages, 200 color photographs

The Iconic Interior: 1900 to the Present

by Dominic Bradbury; photography by Richard Powers New York: Thames & Hudson, $35 368 pages, 600 color illustrations

Editor in chief of the French magazine Connaissance des Arts for more than 20 years, Philip Jodidio has also found time to write definitive books about I. M. Pei, Renzo Piano, Tadao Ando, and many others. Here he takes us for a happy romp in the woods, showing us 53 houses in 24 countries on five continents. They range in size from a 65-square-foot meditation pavilion in England’s Hampshire countryside to a complex of multiuse structures in the Adirondacks. Favorites of this reader include Olle Lundburg’s cabin of reclaimed redwood in Sonoma County, California, and Travis Price Architects’s Hayes house in West Virginia, its grove of trees allowed to grow right through the roof.

There are some familiar names among the architects: Bohlin Cywinski Jackson, Kieran Timberlake, Kengo Kuma, Snøhetta. But there are many bright new faces as well, and not a disappointment in the whole crop. Each building is given no less than four pages and no more than six, all in color, all with floor plans or sections. And, best of all, each one is in what appears to be an idyllic setting—a few off the grid and one of them inaccessible by road, but all enviable. Astonishingly, all were built within the last 12 years.

The brief texts emphasize the care with which the building of these structures has avoided, as much as possible, the interruption of their beautiful sites, so these are delightful sylvan discoveries that also deliver a moral.

Here is a new book by one of our most prolific and inventive design writers. (Well, newish. A first edition of the book was published in London in 2012, but this updated version has more interiors, a fresh design, and a lower price.)

There are some surprises. The first is that all the interiors chosen are residential, something not hinted at by the title. The second is that many obvious choices have been skipped over. We do not see Philip Johnson’s Glass House or Gerrit Rietveld’s Schroeder house or Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater. We see furniture by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Marcel Breuer, and Charles and Ray Eames, but none of their houses. Never mind; we’ve seen those. What we encounter instead is an eclectic collection of 103 interiors, some of which are rarities. Some are given as little space as a page, others as much as six pages.

Some are by fashion designers: Coco Chanel, Bill Blass, Christian Louboutin, and Donna Karan. One is by Frank Lloyd Wright, Jr. Other architects include Shigeru Ban, Lina Bo Bardi, Ricardo Bofill, and Bart Prince. We see a castle in Belgium staged for his own use by Axel Vervoordt, a house by set designer Cedric Gibbons for himself and his wife Dolores del Rio, and another by Madeleine Castaing for herself and her friend and collaborator Jean Cocteau.

These are shown chronologically, beginning with a 1901 house by Peter Behrens for himself and ending with a 2018 remake of an Arts and Crafts house by Los Angeles–based Commune Design. There are also designer biographies, a bibliography, and a listing of houses accessible to the public.

Altogether, a panoramic and delightful tour of a century of changing taste.

Frederick Tang Founder of Frederick Tang Architecture

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The Art of Travel “I found the book while browsing at Greenlight Bookstore in Alain de Botton Brooklyn, a shop that we designed 10 years ago. I don’t consider New York: Vintage, $11 myself to be a naturally enthusiastic traveler. I don’t have 272 pages wanderlust. I love a good staycation—which is coming in handy right now. But my husband loves to travel and it has rubbed off on me a bit. I was curious about the book because it isn’t meant to be a how-to guide of advice or a bucket list of must-sees. It’s organized by pairing anecdotes from de Botton’s own travels with his reflections on other writers and artists. So observations on airport wayfinding signage leads to Flaubert on the exotic. A trip to the Sinai desert reminds him of Burke on the sublime. And even if they’re not explicitly about design, de Botton’s books all feel design adjacent. He brings an inquisitiveness and attention to detail that is inspirational. He tells an anecdote about not wanting to leave a hotel room in Madrid and eating a bag of potato chips from the minibar for dinner. It reminded me how magical a bar in a room can feel— a little station with unexpected treats. We love including wet bars in our residential projects and we always make them places for some decadent details—a dramatic stone, or colored glass, or unexpected metal. A bar in a room always feels like a celebration.”

BOTTOM LEFT: COURTESY OF FREDERICK TANG ARCHITECTURE

What They’re Reading...

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c o n tac t s DESIGNERS IN OPEN HOUSE Bohlin Cywinski Jackson (“Sylvan Sites,” page 41), bcj.com Carolina Pedroni Arquitectura (“The Muses Are Heard,” page 35), carolinapedroni.com Mathias Klotz (“The Muses Are Heard,” page 35), mathiasklotz.com Of Possible Architectures (“Sylvan Sites,” page 41), ofpossiblearchitectures.com Pavel Míček Architects (“Sylvan Sites,” page 41), pavelmicek.com Vaughn McQuarrie (“Sylvan Sites,” page 41), vaughnmcquarrie.co.nz

DESIGNER IN AT HOME Cristina Celestino (“Cristina Celestino Primes Her Canvas,” page 51), cristinacelestino.com

DESIGNER IN INTERVENTION Mar Plus Ask (“Rock Steady,” page 163), marplusask.com

PHOTOGRAPHERS IN FEATURES Filippo Bamberghi (“Lap of Luxury,” page 144), filippobamberghi.it Roland Halbe (“Shaker Heights,” page 106), rolandhalbe.eu Eric Laignel (“True Fiction,” page 96), (“Marshmallow Modern,” page 114), ericlaignel.com Mireille Roobaert/Photofoyer (“Altered Perspective,” page 124), mireilleroobaert.com Wu Qingshan (“Ancient and Modern,” page 152), wuqingshan.cn

Interior Design (USPS#520-210, ISSN 0020-5508) is published 16 times a year, monthly except semimonthly in April, May, August and October by Interior Design Media Group. Interior Design Media Group, 101 Park Avenue, 4th Floor, New York, NY 10178, is a division of Sandow, 3651 NW 8th Avenue, Boca Raton, FL 33431. Periodicals postage paid at New York, NY, and additional mailing offices. Subscriptions: U.S., 1 Year: $69.95; Canada and Mexico, 1 year: $99.99; all other countries: $199.99 U.S. funds. Single copies (prepaid in U.S. funds): $8.95 shipped within U.S. ADDRESS ALL SUBSCRIPTION RE­QUESTS AND CORRESPONDENCE TO: Interior Design, P.O. Box 16479, North Hollywood, CA 91615-6479. TELEPHONE TOLL-FREE: 800-900-0804 (continental U.S. only), 818-487-2014 (all others), or email: subscriptions@interiordesign.net. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to INTERIOR DESIGN, P.O. Box 16479, North Hollywood, CA 91615-6479. Publications Mail Agreement No. 40624074.

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i n t er vention

rock steady “High up in the Tramuntana Mountains of Mallorca, Spain, we designed two small off-the-grid vacation houses with sea views. Surrounded by thousand-

PIET-ALBERT GOETHALS / LIVING INSIDE

year-old olive trees and standing on dry-stacked stone terraces, the structures demonstrate how seamlessly nature and the manmade can intertwine. You must be very convinced of your own skills as an architect if your hand isn’t trembling when sketching something to be built here!

The mountainsides here are a patchwork of small plots, most with stone structures used to shelter tools, make a paella for lunch, or take a siesta.

Some were built right into the slopes, a spatial solution that appealed strongly to us. Our mandate was to leave the property’s mammoth rocks and olive trees undisturbed and to minimize use of color and materials to make shapes and textures stand out.

In one house, pink stucco was chosen as a unifying treatment and to complement the olive tree leaves. We embraced a big boulder as a piece of art; the house was more about sculpting its backdrop and being its lightbox. We also renovated an existing structure on the site that was built against a rock formation. It had only one window, which we changed into the entrance. The interior seemed too narrow to add a kitchen until we realized we could cut through one of the 2-foot-thick stone walls and use its depth to our advantage.

Adding an enormous frameless window above gave us a panoramic view. The beauty of this location, a UNESCO World Heritage site, is that it’s a response to scarcity rather than excess.”

—Mar Vicens and Ask Anker Aistrup, Mar Plus Ask

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