Design May-June 2018
THE NEW YORK TIMES STYLE MAGAZINE
DESIGN REDEFINED
Design May - June 2018
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A Chair (Not Made) for Sitting As the barriers between art and design dissolve, how should furniture respond to the world around it? By Nikil Saval Photographs by Anthony Cotsifas Set design by Jill Nicholls
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The House Is Not a Home On the eve of a major exhibition, Marc Camille Chaimowicz, whose art often examines interior spaces, prepares to leave the London flat where he’s lived and worked for 40 years. By Gaby Wood Photographs by Jason Larkin
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Architecture of Subversion
PHOTOGRAPHS BY MIKAEL OLSSON
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The Swedish island of Gotland is one of those proudly low-key holiday destinations where tradition is upheld and showiness is frowned upon. What, then, explains its recent crop of shockingly contemporary residences? By Nancy Hass Photographs by Mikael Olsson
Page 53 The residence by married architects Hans Murman and Ulla Alberts is wrapped in a scrim printed with life-size photograph of the surrounding juniper trees.
THE NEW YORK TIMES STYLE MAGAZINE
ON THE COVER: To follow the natural curve of the land and avoid blasting into dense rock, Tham, the architect, designed the concrete floors of his near-bare dwelling to rise and fall from room to room. Photograph by Mikael Olsson
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THINGS
People, Places & Things Crystalline sculptures, men’s scents from Louis Vuitton, a time for twinks and more, Modern bungalows in Portugal, the call of the merman and more.
29 Long considered the gold standard of baking, French pastries are being reimagined with bold colors, strange flavors and blatant disregard for the established rules.
PEOPLE 16
Home in Two Worlds
By Ligaya Mishan Photographs by Patricia Heal Styled by Beverley Hyde
Naina Shah and Abhishek Honawar work between New York and India: she in fashion, he in hospitality. Next, the couple will team up on their own design studio. By Alice Newell-Hanson Photographs by Flora Hanitijo
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Market Report Embellished sandals. Photographs by Mari Maeda and Yuji Oboshi
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Large timepieces so good you’ll want to sleep in them. Photographs by Anthony Cotsifas Styled by Haidee Findlay-Levin
PLACES Page 35
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Free Forms Outdoor furniture that’s light as air. Photographs by Leandro Farina Styled by Theresa Rivera
30 Wanderlust
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Rustic and largely unexplored, Upcountry is Maui’s other side of paradise. By John Wogan Photographs by Joe Leavenworth
Bold Bedfellows
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Of a Kind Artist Tony Oursler’s spiritual ephemera. Illustrations by Aurore de La Morinerie. By Nancy Hass Photograph by Nicholas Calcott
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CLOCKWISE FROM TOP: PHOTOGRAPHS BYANTHONY COTSIFAS; FLORA HANITIJO; PATRICIA HEAL
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People, Places & Things Qatar Paris to Doha; Broadening Horizons; Art in Everything.
14 Our Heritage is Your Heritage Keeping the spirit and traditions of Qatar very much alive, Ramadan, the holiest month in the Islamic calendar, was once again observed across the country.
PEOPLE QATAR 18
Pop Culture Creative Emirati design talent Fatma Al Mulla began documenting cult obsessions among communities in the Gulf and immortalised them in illustrations.
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PLACES QATAR 25
Let's Go For A Walk The UK’s largest UNESCO World Heritage Site sprawls over an impressive 229,200 hectares and is emblematic of one the nation’s favorite pasttimes, walking. By Debrina Aliyah Photo courtesy of Twenty30Forty
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A Mischievous Stitch
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A self-professed off-kilter artist of an unconventional medium teams up with Weekend Max Mara to bring some jazz to formal daywear. By Debrina Aliyah
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Candy Pastels Pleasant soft shades to match sunkissed summer skin. By Debrina Aliyah
ABOVE: PHOTO COURTESY OF SHERATON GRAND DOHA RESORT & CONVENTION HOTEL; BELOW: TOMMY HILFIGER
THINGS QATAR
Editor in Chief Hanya Yanagihara Creative Director Patrick Li Style Directors David Farber/Men Malina Joseph Gilchrist/Women
Executive Managing Editor Minju Pak Features Director Thessaly La Force
Photography and Video Director Nadia Vellam
Fashion Features Director Alexa Brazilian
Entertainment Director Lauren Tabach-Bank
Design/Interiors Director Tom Delavan
Digital Director Isabel Wilkinson
THE NEW YORK TIMES NEWS SERVICES General Manager: Michael Greenspon Vice President Licensing and Syndication: Alice Ting Vice President, Executive Editor The New York Times News Service & Syndicate: Nancy Lee LICENSED EDITIONS Editorial Director: Anita Patil Deputy Editorial Director: Alexandra Polkinghorn Editorial Coordinator: Ian Carlino Coordinator: Ilaria Parogni
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PHOTO COURTESY OF GEORGIA KOKOLIS
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Embroidery artist Richard Saja
PEOPLE, PLACES & THINGS
Introduces
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Photograph by Adam Kremer Set Design by Jill Nicholls
Informally arranged along the windowsill of Zuza Mengham’s light-filled South London studio is a small collection of crystals and natural stones, from smoky quartz to Himalayan salt. The 29-year-old artist grew up in a new-age-leaning household in Cambridge, England, and is not immune to the sort of thinking you might be more likely to find in L.A. ‘‘It never hurts to have a bit of positive chi,’’ she says. These objects, however, are more significant than they might seem. Over the past few years, Mengham, who studied at Wimbledon College of Arts, has become known for confection-colored tabletop sculptures that echo the multifaceted architecture of crystals. Beneath the sill stands one of Mengham’s latest works: a craggy and asymmetrical obelisk with a translucent, pale pink peak and opaque grayscale layers below. ‘‘I want to create imagined geographies,’’ she says. From afar, the piece looks almost edible, like a slice of geometric cake with a gelatin top. Up close, it’s like a saturated, angular take on a crystal ball: transfixing and otherworldly. And yet Mengham does not ascribe to her creations anything other than aesthetic power. ‘‘They’re man-made,’’ she says, ‘‘which goes entirely against the idea of natural healing or anything like that.’’
Her material-driven practice is focused largely on resin, which many artists use to create mock-ups of sculptures that will ultimately be rendered in metal. Wanting to prove that the material could be more than a substitute, Mengham crafted an early series of iceberg-shaped blocks of resin infused with copper, bronze, iron, slate, marble and salt: a haunting union of the synthetic and modern with the elemental and ancient. For inspiration, Mengham likes to visit the Neolithic tombs scattered across the English countryside, searching for examples of age-old craftsmanship. At last fall’s London Design Fair, she presented pastelcolored totems made of Jesmonite — a composite substance made from gypsum powder and acrylic
resin — and five species of lichen embedded directly onto their surfaces. The contents of her latest series, ‘‘Moom,’’ feature cloudy swirls, achieved by adding squirts of different pigmented resins to those Above: two of Mengham’s already filling Mengham’s one-off Jesmonite and molds. A sculpture’s form is only final lichen sculptures, once dry, and so the maker must cede as well as her speckled Wedge some control to the universe. ‘‘For vase, all 2016. me it’s all about the actual making. It’s a physical procedure, but I’m always working with light and angles, and there’s something quite meditative about that,’’ she says. ‘‘Maybe that subconsciously comes through in the work — it has to have a bit of presence.’’ — Natalia Rachlin
IN 2013, Louis Vuitton took over Les Fontaines Parfumées (below), a coral-colored 17thcentury bastide in the French Riviera town of Grasse, in anticipation of launching its first women’s scents in over 70 years. More recently, master perfumer Jacques Cavallier Belletrud has been toiling away in the elegant building’s top-floor lab on a second major launch — Vuitton’s first-ever men’s colognes, arriving in stores next month. ‘‘Men today are more disruptive, less classical,’’ Cavallier Belletrud says. ‘‘Thirty or 40 years ago, we used very heavy fragrances. Now, it’s more about fruity notes and those in accordance with nature.’’ Indeed, one of the five new scents, L’Immensité, blends the brightness of grapefruit with ginger, while the softer, woody Orage contains notes of iris, patchouli and vetiver. In addition to a certain lightness, the fragrances share a point of inspiration: travel. Many noses speak of olfactory journeys, but at Vuitton, which has made luggage for everyone from 19th-century explorer Pierre Savorgnan de Brazza to Catherine Deneuve, the connection to travel is more than cursory. Trips to southern Italy got Cavallier Belletrud thinking about Calabrian citron, which he combined with Peruvian balsam for Sur la Route (right). ‘‘One must take the time to discover,’’ he says. — Kelly Harris Starting at $240 each. louisvuitton.com.
IT MIGHT SOUND like a Zen koan, but the next Bali is the Bali of old: Increasingly, travelers are moving away from the island’s beachside resorts in search of the lush natural landscapes that made it a destination in the first place. They might find what they’re looking for within the miniature Arcadian universe that the Canadian jeweler John Hardy and his wife Cynthia have built. In addition to having founded the Green School, an alternative K-12 in the heart of the jungle that is known for its environmental focus, they oversee Bambu Indah, a hotel that they opened outside of Ubud in 2005, with a smattering of Javanese teak buildings perched atop a winding swimming pond. The latest addition to the two-and-a-half acre estate is the River Warung, an open-air, eight-table cafe designed by John and his daughter Elora Hardy, who is the founder of Ibuku, a Bali-based design firm that specializes in bamboo architecture. Here, treated bamboo slices have been bent into overlapping arches that support a curved roof of hand-folded copper shingles. ‘‘I wanted it to appear as Left: an antique though it was constructed by a highly boat outside the intelligent bird,’’ Elora says of the nestlike structure, which sits next to the Ayung River in restaurant. an emerald-hued valley of rice terraces. To get there, guests take an elevator down 60 feet bambuindah.com. and cross an irrigation canal via suspension bridge. Once seated, they can enjoy Balineseinspired dishes, including wood-fired jackfruit steak rubbed with turmeric and galangal, as well as minced fish wrapped in banana leaf and served with corn fritters and greens sautéed in coconut oil. ‘‘It’s everything we loved about the island that is now so hard to find,’’ says Cynthia. — Gisela Williams
Ties That Bind ‘‘ONLY CONNECT!’’ begins the most famous passage of E. M. Forster’s 1910 novel ‘‘Howards End,’’ which asks us to unite ‘‘the prose and the passion’’ of life, to ‘‘live in fragments no longer.’’ It also points to the book’s theme of social connection and its obstacles — a topic that has an additional charge in our era of supposed connectivity. Contrasting the principles of two privileged English families — the bohemian, open-hearted Schlegels and the staid industrialist Wilcoxes — as their lives overlap with an intellectually curious but impecunious young man, Forster’s masterpiece took on the big, divisive issues of the day — class, power, gender — while illuminating commonalities, like the need for love and sex, shelter and a sense of purpose, with moral complexity and tender comedy. Few novels feel as deserving of fresh consideration, and this spring, two worthy adaptations offer just
that. A new BBC/Starz miniseries written by Kenneth Lonergan emphasizes Forster’s deep humanism over the sumptuous Edwardian period details underlined in the beloved 1992 Merchant-Ivory film rendition. As Margaret, Hayley Atwell brings a warm heroism to one of English literature’s great women, though most significant of all is the decision to cast actors of color in supporting roles, a reminder that Britain never did resemble the one Brexiteers might have imagined. Meanwhile, a queer retelling of the story, written by Matthew Lopez, directed by Stephen Daldry and starring Vanessa Redgrave and John Benjamin Hickey, just wrapped off West End at the Young Vic. ‘‘The Inheritance’’ transposes Forster’s story to present-day New York, grounding it in the gay community a generation after the height of the AIDS crisis in the 1980s. At a time in which it feels like the Wilcoxes have won, at least for the moment, it’s nice to believe that the Schlegels are still in charge of the story. — Megan O’Grady
MINI MARKET
Classic carryalls to go the distance.
From left: Salvatore Ferragamo bag, $2,800, (866) 337-7242. Mansur Gavriel bag, $1,295, mansurgavriel.com. The Row bag, $5,600, (212) 755-2017.
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CLOCKWISE FROM TOP: ALINA VLASOVA; MARI MAEDA AND YUJI OBOSHI (3); COURTESY OF LOUIS VUITTON MALLETIER (2)
GREEN SCREEN
DOWN IN THE VALLEY
New Hardware
PEOPLE, PLACES & THINGS
Foundrae, the fine jewelry line Beth Bugdaycay launched with her husband, Murat, in 2015, is all about the personality. Wearers can stack rings, pair enameled charms and create custom, 18-karat gold pieces that pull from the brand’s 60-strong lexicon of symbols — a triangle for transformation, a lion’s head for strength. Foundrae’s first store, opening this month in downtown Manhattan at 52 Lispenard Street, takes a similar approach: An antique roll-top jeweler’s bench (where shoppers can see items get soldered) and a suite of 1970s- era rounded leather armchairs by Giancarlo Piretti sit alongside contemporary commissioned pieces such as a moody landscape by Tyler Hays of the furniture company BDDW. As intended, the overall effect is more homey and welcoming than that of a traditional jewelry store. There are even shelves lined with books, including those by 20th-century American writer Jessamyn West, Bugdaycay’s ancestor, that visitors can borrow. ‘‘People use our pieces to tell their own stories,’’ says Bugdaycay, who has seemingly inherited an instinct for narrative. ‘‘You end up being friends with every customer.’’ foundrae.com — Kate Guadagnino From top: Foundrae necklaces and rings displayed in bronze vitrines atop custom ceramic pedestals; Bugdaycay in the sitting area of the new store.
Watch Beth Bugdaycay make something for T on tmagazine. com and @ tmagazine.
NOW BOOKING
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WAVE Berbere — a deep-red spice blend whose recipe, like those for curry and mole, varies from kitchen to kitchen, but typically begins with red pepper, cardamom, fenugreek and ginger — has long been a staple in Ethiopian cooking. ‘‘It’s what lends the stewed and roasted dishes called wats their distinctive and aromatic heat,’’ says Sam Saverance, co-owner of Brooklyn’s vegan Bunna Cafe, which serves a red lentil wat (at the center of the platter pictured above) as well as kategna, a berbere and olive oil paste spread over injera (sourdough flatbread). In addition to making berbere-spiced classics, Christopher Roberson of Etete, a contemporary Ethiopian restaurant in Washington, D.C., has lately been experimenting with berbere in other types of dishes, too, as with his popular injera chicken tacos with collard greens and fresh farmer’s cheese. Now, chefs across the country are following suit, and berbere is popping up in all kinds of cuisines. At Salare, a New American restaurant in Seattle, Edouardo Jordan braises blanched octopus in a sauce with berbere, red wine and crushed tomatoes — his spin on octopus tagine. ‘‘The complexity just wakes everything up,’’ he says. Maxcel Hardy, who plans to use lots of berbere (‘‘it’s not a question of if, but how’’) at Honey, his Afro-Caribbean restaurant set to open in Detroit later this year, first encountered the ingredient growing up in Miami. Chef Ayesha Nurdjaja, meanwhile, was inspired to recreate a berbere-rubbed chicken kebab for Shuka, Vicki Freeman and Marc Meyer’s new Mediterranean place in New York, after spending a week with an all-male Bedouin tribe in the Moroccan desert. The key, says Ari Bokovza, who recently added a pan-roasted hake with a berbere-laced chickpea ragout to the menu at New York’s Claudette, is to avoid store-bought blends — his take includes caraway, turmeric and spiced paprika. ‘‘It’s not labor intensive, so why not make it your own?’’ — Katie Chang
Modern Country Ninety minutes east of Lisbon, amid the knotted olive trees and historic farmhouses of Portugal’s Alentejo region, sits the defiantly modernist Villa Extramuros. A Tetris-like assemblage of stone, glass and whitewashed concrete, the five-room bed-and-breakfast, which opened in 2012, was designed by Lisbon-based architect Jodi Fornells and eclectically decorated (Saarinen Tulip chairs, striped wool rugs from nearby Monsaraz) by its owners, François Savatier and Jean-Christophe Lalanne, a French couple. Now, they’ve teamed up with Fornells again to add a pair of free-standing cottages, just down the path (and past the infinity pool) from the main building. The facades of the new structures — perfect cubes of 500 square feet — are covered with local cork, and their interiors have been outfitted in a style Savatier calls ‘‘écologique-pop,’’ with ’70s-era brass lamps, handmade Artevida wall tiles, spindly-legged stools by Jasper Morrison and geometric prints by Aurélie Nemours. Here, after a breakfast including fresh figs and pasteis de nata delivered right to their door, guests might venture out to the nearby city of Évora, home to a 13th-century Gothic cathedral and the remnants of a Roman temple. Those returning to the compound in the evening need not worry about getting lost in the groves — each bungalow has a rectangular neon light affixed to it, one red and the other a gleaming yellow. villaextramuros .com — Gisela Williams
CLOCKWISE FROM TOP: KYLE KNODELL (2); NICOLAS MATHEUS (2); ANDERS AHLGREN
HEAT
Paris to Doha Ghada Al Khater, a Qatari political ARToonist, who gained recognition and praise for her blockadeinspired art, successfully completed a threemonth residency program at the renowned Cité internationale des Arts, Paris, one of the biggest and most important art residencies in the world. Held under the patronage of Qatar Museums (QM) Chairperson, HE Sheikha Al Mayassa bint Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, the Paris Residency is an extension of QM’s Fire Station: Artist in Residence program in Doha. To celebrate her accomplishments, Ghada hosted an exhibition at the Doha Fire Station in May. One of her most recent works, completed during the Paris residency, is “Blockade: Energy Drink”, which presents a humorous take on how the blockade motivated the country to move forward while relying on its own people. – Udayan Nag
Broadening Horizons Ahmed Al Jufairi, known for pushing the boundaries of self-expression and toying with the concept of freedom, became the fifth Qatari artist to join the Paris Art Residency Program. Al Jufairi will be joining the program in Studio Qatar at the Cite Internationale des Arts. A graduate from Virginia Commonwealth University in Qatar with a major in Painting and Printmaking, Ahmed focuses on the beauty of imperfection, sending out an important message to the audience, and explaining that “beauty” and “perfection” are relative terms. Fascinated by what makes us unique, Ahmed has also been known to tackle the subject of social acceptance, arguing that uniqueness and individuality are keys to beautiful innovations. Khalifa Al Obaildy, Director of the Fire Station, said: “His (Ahmed’s) artwork combines the best of the East and West, delivering a unique interpretation of the beauty of co-existence.” – Udayan Nag Exhibits of artist Ahmed Al Jufairi.
Art in Everything
Exhibits on display in Gallery One.
Inspired by the retail stores of the world’s greatest galleries and museums, Gallery One was launched in the UAE in 2006. It has grown into an inspired network of eclectic retail spaces, driven by the one core philosophical belief, “Art in Everything”. Gallery One founder, Gregg Sedgwick, said that since its inception, the company had constantly been in search for new artistic talent. “Whether it’s an artist, painter or photographer, or a product designer with a brilliant idea, newness is the lifeblood of retail. We are therefore becoming increasingly recognised for our unique retail ranges, which exude cultural provenance, beautiful packaging and regional relevance.” Sedgwick said the company was wholly committed to applying its design philosophy as it continued to expand across other regions throughout the world, describing Gallery One as “the antithesis of the ‘elitism’ often associated with the gallery genre”. – Udayan Nag 13
CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: DOHA FIRE STATION; DOHA FIRE STATION; GALLERY ONE; DOHA FIRE STATION
A woman taking photographs of Artoonist Ghada Al Khater's work.
Our Heritage is Your Heritage Keeping the spirit and traditions of Qatar very much alive, Ramadan, the holiest month in the Islamic calendar, was once again observed across the country. By Udayan Nag
PHOTO COURTESY OF THE WESTIN DOHA HOTEL & SPA.
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PEOPLE, PLACES & THINGS QATAR
HERITAGE
Lavish arrangements were made during Ramadan at the Westin Doha Hotel & SPA and Sheraton Grand Doha Resort & Convention Hotel.
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PHOTOS COURTESY OF THE WESTIN DOHA HOTEL & SPA AND SHERATON GRAND DOHA RESORT & CONVENTION HOTEL.
FASTING, FEASTING, and an ambience of benevolence: it's that time of the year again for Qatar and its residents. Despite abstinence being the order of day from dawn to sunset for majority of the Muslims, there is a lot to look forward to. The shorter working hours provide respite to the residents, and once the fast is broken, it's time to feast in the form of numerous iftar and suhoor gatherings. The spirit and tradition are given a further boost in the middle of the month when children dress up in bright clothing to participate in Garangao. The royal mansion at Sheraton Grand Doha Resort & Convention Hotel was one of the major attractions during this pious month. It reflected the rich Qatari heritage with its lavish Turath Ramadan Tent set up in the Al Majlis Ballroom. Its exquisitely decked dining areas offered the ideal setting for an iftar feast as well as an intimate suhoor. Turkish Airlines also held a Ramadan suhoor event for its media partners, which took place at the Shangri-La Hotel in West Bay. The evening was led by Mehmed Zingal, General Manager of Turkish Airlines’ Qatar office. Also, as part of its ongoing commitment to the holy month of Ramadan, Marriott International celebrated the ninth annual “Iftar for Cabs” initiative at participating Marriott hotels in the Middle East, including eight hotels of the Qatar Marriott Worldwide Business Council.
People
TWO BY DESIGN
With their feet in two countries and two fields — she’s a designer, he’s a restaurateur —
Home in
Two Worlds Naina Shah and Abhishek Honawar are at the forefront of an Indian creative class.
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By Alice Newell-Hanson Photographs by Flora Hanitijo
OUTSIDE NAINA SHAH and Abhishek Honawar’s Manhattan apartment, the sky is the color of raw concrete. But inside the couple’s airy East Village apartment, which smells faintly of Assam tea and glints with eye-catching Indian regional crafts — miniature caskets inlaid with mother-of-pearl, handwoven kauna grass baskets, carved wooden spirit masks collected on their travels through Rajasthan, Kerala and Goa — everything sparkles with light. Shah creates intricate decorations for European and American fashion houses using traditional Indian craftsmanship; she and her mother run the Mumbaibased bespoke embroidery company Aditiany, which produces hand-finished embellishments for
the likes of Gucci, Erdem and Alexander McQueen. Honawar, a hotelier and restaurateur, operates, among other properties, the five-bedroom hotel 28 Kothi in Jaipur — a terraced jewel box of a guesthouse owned by Siddharth Kasliwal, an heir to Jaipur’s legendary jewelry emporium the Gem Palace. In the eight years since the pair started dating, and the two since they were married in Jaipur, Honawar and Shah’s respective creative worlds have become inextricable. You have likely already seen Shah’s work, possibly without realizing it. The gold sequin snakes that wound up on the Renaissance-inspired gowns of Gucci’s cruise 2018 collection are the handiwork
of Aditiany artisans. Each iridescent sea-foam-green sequin on the shimmering Calvin Klein dress that Lupita Nyong’o wore to the 2016 Met Gala was applied, by hand, at the company’s Mumbai atelier. Shah, who grew up in New York and learned the trade by working with her mother (who founded Aditiany in 1991), helps brands realize their most otherworldly visions, overseeing a 30-person-plus team of fabric buyers and Naina Shah (left) and embroiderers in Mumbai Abhishek Honawar’s and New York. The atelier Manhattan apartment is filled with objets from has helped transform their transcontinental a mohair sweater into a existence and shared garden of silk trompe-l’oeil love of design.
Clockwise from top left: Shah sifting through her voluminous stock of embroidered fabrics at her showroom in New York; Hindu deities in Shah’s office; a Swarovski-crystal snake that adorned a 2012 Ralph Lauren dress; Shah’s stash of fine ribbons and appliqués; the dining table in the couple’s East Village apartment doubles as Honawar’s desk.
roses (Dolce & Gabbana), hand-beaded an entire custom jumpsuit tailored to model Bella Hadid’s body (Alexander Wang) and turned a velvet Saint Laurent smoking jacket into a galaxy of embroidered stars for Keith Richards. Producing each design requires its own kind of sleight of hand. The 33-year-old Shah splits her time between her studio in Mumbai and New York, where Aditiany has a showroom in the garment district, a storehouse filled with thousands of embroidery swatches: There are yards of gold bullion fringe and Chantilly lace, a rainbow of Murano glass beads and a vast library of brilliant crystals and semiprecious stones. She also makes about four trips a year to Europe to discuss upcoming collections with various houses. The creative process is collaborative: Design teams relay their references for the upcoming season, and Shah then presents samples of embellished fabrics — ’20sstyle bead-trimmed lace, fragile Tyrolean-esque flower-stitched silk tulle and new embellishment techniques being developed by the studio in Mumbai, such as embroidery using recycled materials — that might fulfill those imaginings. Recently, Honawar began accompanying Shah on her visits to London, Paris and Milan, and joining
her at meetings. ‘‘At first, people thought it was bizarre for me to meet [with] all these houses,’’ he says. ‘‘But I thought it was so interesting to sit there with someone like the head of Gucci or Prada as they tell you what they’re going to do for the next few seasons.’’ Maintaining a blurred boundary between personal and professional life could make some couples feel claustrophobic, but for Shah, Honawar’s interest is both creatively fulfilling and fun. Building relationships with luxury brands has given the 34-year-old Honawar ideas for new businesses as well, including a forthcoming design studio, a collaboration with his wife that Shah says will offer ‘‘everything from linens to glassware to the perfect towel,’’ and will highlight the best of Indian artisanal traditions. Like Shah, Honawar, who was raised in Mumbai, works mainly between India and New York. In addition to co-founding 28 Kothi in Jaipur, the threeoutlet gastropub the Woodside Inn and the Pantry, a bakery in Mumbai, he also co-founded Inday, a vegetable-heavy cafe in N.Y.C.’s NoMad district. Along with two new projects in Mumbai — the recently opened Bombay Vintage, a traditional Indian restaurant, and a still unnamed Southeast Asian restaurant and cocktail bar — he’s also developing
a Puglian-influenced auberge on 60 acres in the Rajasthani countryside. For years, he says, major Indian cities simply didn’t have the kind of dining options you’d find in Paris or London: You ate meals at home, not outside of it. The past decade, however, has changed that: American-born Indians, like his wife, have returned to their parents’ homeland, bringing with them expectations of a truly global restaurant scene. But for all Honawar’s contributions to that scene, 28 Kothi, which he designed in 2016 as a respite for the myriad fashion designers, jewelers and photographers who travel through Jaipur, remains one of his favorite projects. The guesthouse’s new cafe will serve elevated vegetarian regional classics such as the traditional rice dish biryani — which he’s reimagined with spiced quinoa, crisped okra and a sharp-sweet tomato chutney — or paneer, a firm farmer’s cheese he’s converted into cottagecheese form and mixed with sprouts grown in the kitchen’s garden. Next, he wants to create a larger hotel ‘‘that exhibits the true India’’ to the wider world. ‘‘It’s a vast country with diverse culture and history,’’ he says. ‘‘My idea of modern Indian luxury is preserving that heritage while presenting it to travelers in a language they understand.’’ 17
PEOPLE QATAR
THE ARTIST
Clockwise from top left: A selection of the pieces from the capsule collection; the make-up bag designed by Fatma Al Mulla incorporates her signature colorful illustrations.
Pop Culture Creative We first met Fatma Al Mulla some four years ago when she had just discovered how powerful the internet was in making careers.
THE POWER of viral sharing had turned her illustrating hobby into a flourishing merchandising venture featuring her creative prints. The Emirati design talent Fatma Al Mulla began documenting cult obsessions among communities in the Gulf and immortalised them in illustrations. “I started creating illustrations of these items that included short comments with the objects. These comments were all in Arabic and in a play of words they represented two different meanings, depending on how you would like to interpret them,” she explains. Young people across the region identified with these symbols of luxury and embraced the quirky designs by Al Mulla that allowed them to express their interests. “A girl told me that she used the Cartier bracelet illustration as her display picture, and her fiancé actually took the hint
and bought her one shortly after,” Al Mulla said. The power of social sharing is what Al Mulla most admires. The domino effect of one sharer to another has catapulted her fame. When the requests started pouring in to purchase Al Mulla’s illustrations, she decided to put them on T-shirts and make the experience physical, beyond the internet. “Art is meant to be shared and I always feel it is not for me to put my name on it but when I started to make these t-shirts, fans found my blog and discovered that it was me.” The brand FMM by Al Mulla was born. She describes it as a pop-culture design line, made with love in Dubai and inspired by the society we live in. The brand has since expanded to include dresses, accessories, bags, and leather goods while Al Mulla’s creative work has earned her various regional accolades.
PHOTOS COURTESY OF TOMMY HILFIGER
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By Debrina Aliyah
This season, the Emirati artist has partnered with Tommy Hilfiger to design a make-up bag that is now available in select regional stores of the brand. A collaborative effort that coincides with Tommy Hilfiger’s Ramadan collection, Al Mulla merged the collection’s floral pattern with her own interpretation on the bag’s design. “I wanted to celebrate the floral pattern in my own way. It was very important that the brand had allowed me the creative freedom. I’ve always incorporated floral patterns in my past designs, so this collaboration just felt right,” explains the young artist who is also the ambassador for this season’s Ramadan collection. Featuring styles for young girls, new-borns and women, the capsule is the brand’s fifth initiative for Ramadan. “As an Arab Muslim woman, I feel very proud for such a major brand to focus on Ramadan and the significance of the holy month. This initiative through fashion feels special to me,” Al Mulla says. The collection includes two gowns for women combining deep navy tones with silk chiffon fabrics and floral details, six dresses for girls in floral prints and stripes, and rompers and dresses with bow details for newborns. “I would wear the collection with statement accessories and jewelry, and perhaps even colorful shoes.”
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Clockwise from top: The Emirati designer has won regional accolades for her creative work; the Ramadan capsule is available in select regional stores.
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Places
OBJECTS
Free Forms
Wired, webbed or sculptural — the latest outdoor furniture seems to defy gravity. Photographs by Leandro Farina Styled by Theresa Rivera
Clockwise from left: Alwy Visschedyk for Summit X506 slipper chair, $3,730, summitfurniture.com. Stefano Giovannoni and Elisa Gargan for Vondom Stone lounge chair, $835, vondom.com. Chilewich Basketweave cube, $295, chilewich.com. Rodolfo Dordoni for Minotti Caulfield coffee table, $2,730, minottiddc.com.
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Clockwise from top: Lionel Doyen for Manutti San sofa, $5,278, walterswicker.com. Marc Thorpe for Moroso Husk armchair, $630, morosousa.com. Lorenza Bozzoli for Dedon Brixx side table, $1,680, dedon.de.
OBJECTS
DIGITAL TECH: ISAAC ROSENTHAL. SET ASSISTANTS: LUKAS ADLER, EDDIE BALLARD AND HOLLY TROTTA
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Clockwise from top left: Paola Navone for Baxter Manila armchair, $9,520, ddcnyc.com. Russell Woodard for Woodard Furniture Sculptura bench, $1,150, dwr.com. SheltonMindel for Sutherland Continuous Line lounge chair, price on request, sutherlandfurniture.com.
WANDERLUST
Far From the Raging Surf
Clockwise from top left: the view from Kula Lodge, with Maalaea Bay in the distance; a bedroom at Paia Inn; a lemon grove at O’o Farm.
High above Maui’s famed beaches, in the island’s fertile bohemian heartland, the hills are piney, the air is scented with lavender and cowboys still wander past on horseback. By John Wogan Photographs by Joe Leavenworth
STAY Lumeria Maui The first thing one notices at this wellness retreat in Makawao is the silence. Shrouded with bamboo and palms and enclosed by a lava rock wall, it has 24 guest rooms with colorful Indian cotton textiles covering the pillows and daybeds, and hosts yoga and meditation classes on the grassy lawn. Breakfast includes papaya, mango and guava straight from the trees. Other meals are had at the hotel restaurant, which serves healthy-leaning dishes like freshcaught mahi-mahi with heirloom tomatoes, and house-made ulu (Hawaiian breadfruit) with a sweet persimmon chutney. lumeriamaui.com. Kula Lodge Built into the northern slopes of Haleakala Crater just outside of Makawao, Kula Lodge is as much a time capsule as a hotel — it opened in 1951 and is known for
its rustic, kitschy charm (rocking chairs and floral bedspreads). The property’s five shingled-wood cottages, each with its own fireplace and balcony, offer sweeping views of the neighboring islands. There are no televisions (or air conditioners, though they’re hardly needed 3,200 feet above sea level), and so guests spend time reading under blooming jacaranda trees in the garden and lingering over bowls of macadamia-nut pesto pasta in the glass-enclosed lodge restaurant, also famous for its sunset cocktail hour. kulalodge.com. Paia Inn With the island’s best organic food market, Mana, and half a dozen contemporary art galleries, the town of Paia — about five miles northwest of Makawao — offers the same rural-bohemian spirit as Upcountry, but with beach access as well. The five-bedroom Paia Inn
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A VERDANT EXPANSE of misty hills punctuated with tiny, preserved-in-amber towns, Central Maui goes largely ignored by sunbathers and surfers congregating on the island’s southern towns of Wailea, Lahaina and Kapalua. Sitting as high as 3,600 feet, Upcountry, as this 200-square-mile area by Haleakala Volcano is called, has cooler temperatures (at night it can approach freezing) and more eucalyptus trees than coconut palms. It became an agricultural center in the late 1700s, when a British naval captain gave Hawaii’s King Kamehameha I a herd of longhorn cattle that spawned an entire ranching industry. There aren’t as many paniolos (Hawaiian cowboys) today as there were in the 19th century, but several big ranches remain, as does a general appreciation for living off the land: In addition to the ranches, there are coffee farms, lavender fields and scenic hiking loops through forest reserves. Many of Upcountry’s 38,000 residents (less than one-fourth of Maui’s overall population) live in and around its small, historic towns, which include Haiku, Pukalani and Makawao, former pineapple plantations and ranch communities established in the 1800s. As industrialization forced plantation owners to downsize post-World War II, the families of the primarily Hawaiian, Chinese, Portuguese and Japanese workers who remained were joined in the 1960s and ’70s by a wave of mainland hippies looking to get off the grid. (Willie Nelson and Mick Fleetwood have homes nearby.) Over the past decade or so, the area’s relatively cheap housing and temperate climate have attracted all sorts of wanderers, dropouts and seekers, including jewelry makers, woodworkers and glassblowers, as well as a new generation of farmers growing organic produce (poha berries, lilikoi) for local restaurants. (The cuisine here leans more toward Provençal than taco truck.) And so, these days, Upcountry is worth more than just a drive-through on the way to the rocky, rust-colored terrain of the island’s most spectacular national attraction: Haleakala Crater, 10,023 feet above sea level and best experienced at sunrise, when the ghostly fog lifts to reveal peaks and valleys all around. You may even realize you don’t need a beach after all.
WANDERLUST PLACES
opened there in 2008 in a two-story, bougainvillea-fringed 1920s-era stucco building. Its simple décor of hand-carved koa wood daybeds and bright white linens is offset by local painter Avi Kiriaty’s vibrant depictions of ancient Polynesian life. There’s also a spa offering volcanic stone and coconut oil massages, and a cafe that’s become a magnet for surfers, who stop in for a juice — try the Shrub Sparkler, made with watermelon and hibiscus — before hitting nearby Baldwin Beach. paiainn.com.
Clockwise from top left: the ’50s-era Kula Lodge; a volcanic stone wall at Ulupalakua Vineyards; coconut cake at Kula Bistro; Maui Gold pineapples on their way to becoming wine at Ulupalakua Vineyards; a table at Lumeria Maui’s restaurant, the Wooden Crate.
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EAT O’o Farm Crops at this eight-acre establishment in Kula range from coffee and kaffir limes to mint and marigolds. Founded in 2000 by two surfer friends, O’o supplies both the Maui Food Bank and local purveyors, including the farm’s openair restaurant, Pacific’O, located on the western part of the island. There, you can find vegetablefocused dishes like roasted Maui onion and beet confit with hijiki, but in Upcountry, you can simply go to the source: Twice-daily tours through the orchards conclude with a family-style meal of ahi tuna marinated in lemongrass oil, roasted rosemary chicken and heaping platters of grilled fennel, chard and eggplant. oofarm.com. Makawao Steak House This green-shingled, 1927-built structure, which sits on Makawao’s sleepy downtown strip of Baldwin Avenue alongside hippie shops peddling crystals and wind chimes, houses what may be Upcountry’s most old-school restaurant. Its clubby wood-paneled dining room has studded leather armchairs and oil paintings, and in the adjoining
fireplace-lit cocktail lounge, mai tais are served without a hint of irony. The food is predictable — truffle fries; perfectly marbled grass-fed ribeye from nearby Hoku Nui Farm — but deeply satisfying after a day spent hiking Haleakala. makawaosteakhouse.com.
plus traditional island specialties, including one of the best takes on loco moco — a gravy-smothered hamburger patty with two over-easy eggs, sautéed mushrooms and onions all served over steamed white rice. kulabistro.com. SHOP
Kula Bistro A low-slung roadside cafe 14 miles up Kula Highway from Paia, Kula Bistro is an anomaly in a place where many businesses are run by descendants of the original owner. But ever since Italian Luciano Zanon opened his cheerful, fastpaced restaurant with his Maui-born wife, Chantal, in 2012, it’s been a hit. Zanon makes Italian staples with a Hawaiian twist, such as woodfired pizza topped with kalua pork and chunks of fresh pineapple,
Hot Island Glass Founded in 1992, this Makawao gallery took off nearly a decade later when two of Hawaii’s leading glassblowers, collaborators Chris Richards and Chris Lowry, purchased it from the previous owner. They’ve since filled the wooden plantation-style building with their own work — swirling cerulean and scarlet vases and sculptural pieces with multicolored jellyfish forms that appear to hang in midair — as
well as a few items from other makers, including Jim Graper’s sea-urchin-like paperweights. hotislandglass.com. SEE Ulupalakua Vineyards Upcountry’s nutrient-dense volcanic soil accounts for Maui’s only vineyard, which stretches across Haleakala’s southern slopes and grows everything from malbec and syrah to chenin blanc and grenache. Tasting tours start at King’s Cottage, a stone dwelling built as a guest house for King David Kalakaua, Hawaii’s last reigning royal. Wine, though, is just one aspect of the 18,000-acre ranch, which also offers horseback riding through lush pastures and woodsy areas dense with eucalyptus, jacaranda and camphor trees. mauiwine.com.
WAYFARING
Let's Go For A Walk The UK’s largest UNESCO World Heritage Site sprawls over an impressive 229,200 hectares and is emblematic of one the nation’s favorite past times, walking. By Debrina Aliyah
WITH A LANDSCAPE OF MOUNTAINS and ranges that never seem to end and lakes of sparkling blue waters, it is easy to see how the Lake District National Park has for years become a source of cultural and artistic inspiration. But while literary greats including William Wordsworth and Beatrix Potter gave the region its creative association, it is the millions who visit the various peaks and mountains each year that truly gives life to the place. Walking is the simplest of actvities. Be it around the lakes, through the villages, up the mountains or across the ranges, the national park has endless options that is suitable for any level of fitness. But of course, the geography is equally as exciting for lake cruises and kayaking as well as intense biking and swimming. To just simply absorb the natural magnificence of the landscape, we recommend easy walks and cultural explorations of the little villages. Soak in the sun during the warmer months and enjoy a generous serving of ice cream from English Lakes, the producer of locally churned goodies from the area’s cows. And if you feel like it, try your hand at being a farmer for the day by tending to the livestock.
Clockwise from top: The Bridge House a 17th century home that is still intact in Ambleside; a walk in the woods of Rannerdale Knotts in Buttermere.
Woodhouse Buttermere A cosy little bed and breakfast right on one of the smaller lakes, Crummock Water, serving as a great base to explore the surrounding areas. Family-run with intimate service and homely facilities, the rooms are charmingly appointed with really comfortable beds that we are still dreaming of. Dinner service is by request and remember to save room for the excellent desserts. Mountaineering guide services are available. www.woodhousebuttermere.uk Basecamp Tipi Luxury camping accommodation in a secluded corner of the National Trust Campsite with gorgeous views of Bowfell and Langdale Pikes. Each
tipi is structured on a wooden platform and comes with a stove, sheep skins, lanterns, fairy lights and logs. Designed as a gathering space, the tents are meant to sleep up to four and all you need to bring are sleeping bags and a sense of adventure. www.basecamptipi.co.uk Brimstone at Langdale A stylish luxury getaway reminiscent of a ski chalet complete with a personal assistant service to help with any requests. Perfect for couples or small groups of adults, the property has a recently opened spa to work away the aches from day-long walking and exploration. Relax on the spacious balconies with views of the never-ending mountains. www.brimstonehotel.co.uk 25
PHOTO COURTESY OF TWENTY30FORTY
STAY
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WAYFARING
EAT Kirkstile Inn Buttermere A favorite with the locals for both its hearty yet modern take on British pub food. The classic steak pie comes in the form of layered pastry sheets with meat filling a la the Italian lasagna while the pea soup is served with delicious focaccia-inspired rolls. The sticky date pudding is an absolute must-try and the homemade custard deserves an encore. www.kirkstile.com Great North Pie This cozy little store in Ambleside is
home to some of the best pies in the UK. Winner of multiple awards at the 2015 British Pie Awards, chef Neil Broomfield creates unique recipes every season so there is never a fixed menu. For spring summer 2018, the Swaledale beef mince and onion pie is a must-try with an interesting cinnamon twist while the spinach and cheese pie with nutmeg works for non-meat eaters. www.greatnorthpie.co Sharrow Bay A Lake District institution with a long history and a panoramic view over Ullswater, the restaurant has a one-star Michelin rating for its
exceptional use of local produce and an impressive cellar. Menus are served for both lunches and dinners but be sure to try its Sunday lunches offering a taste of British tradition. www.sharrowbay.co.uk EXPLORE Scafell Pike The main highlight for most visiting the Lake District is the magnificent walk to the top of the UK’s highest peak. With a total ascent of 1,012 meters arriving at the highest point at 978 meters, it takes an average hiker about eight hours to complete. It is a great full-day walk and aboveaverage level of fitness is required to complete the hike but, with the right guide and proper equipment, most can finish it. www.scafellpike.org.uk Hill Top House With the arrival of the animated movie Peter Rabbit in cinemas this year, it is no surprise that the frenzy for the beloved cartoon character has picked up again. Hill Top House, a stone’s throw away from Hawkshead, is the
PHOTO COURTESY OF TWENTY30FORTY
Right: The common space at the charming family-run Woodhouse bed and breakfast; left and opposite: the various mountains and ranges across the region offer walking options for those with different fitness levels.
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WAYFARING
Castlerigg Stone Circle For some pre-historic marvels, head on to Castlerigg Stone Circle, one of the most atmospheric and dramatic British stone circle sites in the region. With a backdrop that looks like something straight out of a Tolkien fantasy book, these 5,000-year-old stones overlook the Thirlmere Valley. The purpose and construction of the stone circle are
shrouded in mystery as archaeologists have yet to figure out its actual origins but it is widely considered to be a Neolithic period meeting place. www.english-heritage.org.uk/visit/ places/castlerigg-stone-circle.
The local church right around the corner from Crummock Water.
PHOTO COURTESY OF TWENTY30FORTY
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farmhouse where Peter Rabbit’s creator Beatrix Potter lived. The late English writer and illustrator had based the character’s kitchen garden on this property, the green patch a big attraction with adult and young fans alike till this day. Entry is by timed ticket and reservations are recommended. www.nationaltrust.org.uk/hill-top
Things
FOOD MATTERS
Clockwise from top left: Supermoon pistachio-rose croissant; Supermoon mango croissant; Vive la Tarte blood orange croissant; Dominique Ansel pear-chamomile cronut; Vive la Tarte orange-blossom-za’atar croissant; Sugarbloom white-miso kouign-amann; Chanson pistachio éclair; Supermoon strawberrylychee croissant; Chanson lemon-poppyseed kouignamann; Dominique Ansel brown-sugar kouignamann; Chanson pistachio croissant; Bake Code charcoal-matcha croissant. Next page, top left: Vive la Tarte strawberry shortcake croissant.
For years, no chef dared try to improve the croissant. Now, though, a new generation of bakers is reinventing the most iconic of French patisserie.
Le Sacrilège!
THE CROISSANTS OF Baker Doe — a delivery-only pastry service in San Francisco, run by a husband and wife who decline to reveal their identities — appear like a new species startled in the wild. One is striped blue, with a coif of cotton candy in hydrangea hues and a lode of chile-enflamed orange curd waiting to be unleashed; another, ringed in deep purple, flaunts a lavender shard of ube (purple yam) like a lone, useless wing. They are originals, yet they don’t exist
in isolation: Others of their kin — that is, pastries in thrillingly deviant forms with classical French lineage but non-canonical ingredients (often drawn from Asian cuisines), as likely to be savory as sweet — can be spotted at Sugarbloom Bakery in Los Angeles, confettied in nori; at Bake Code in Toronto, blackened by charcoal under a rosy crust of mentaiko (cod roe); and at Supermoon Bakehouse in New York, piped with rum crème
pâtissière and pineapple jelly in a mirage of a piña colada. Is this blasphemy or natural evolution? It’s not the first time pastries have undergone mutations in recent history. Nearly five years ago, the French-trained pastry chef Dominique Ansel trademarked the cronut, that cannily named croissant-doughnut hybrid sold from his storefront in SoHo, New York. Hoards lined up before dawn for limited-batch runs that vanished within the hour, to be resold
on the black market by scalpers at a 1,900-percent markup (as much as $100 each). The cronut was fetishized, then scorned for being fetishized, then imperfectly and ubiquitously reproduced. Dunkin’ Donuts sold millions (of a version that a corporate spokesman insisted had been in development for decades). Within a year, the oracular science-fiction writer William Gibson had published a novel forecasting a future in which cronuts were churned out by 3-D printers.
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By Ligaya Mishan Photographs by Patricia Heal Styled by Beverley Hyde
cake.’’ Carême has disciples in Paris today, including Christophe Adam, known for éclairs ornamented with edible silver, popcorn and Mona Lisa eyes; Jonathan Blot, conjurer of macarons that taste like bubblegum; and, of course, Pierre Hermé, who daubs raspberry-lychee pâté inside croissants and showers them with candied rose petals. Like the original viennoiserie, which were painstakingly elegant pastries designed for the Hapsburg court in imperial Vienna that eventually became indispensable to the city’s sidewalks, their decadence is matched by the virtuosity of their construction and their element of surprise: They are, then as now, as much for beholding as for eating. Their contemporary allure is aided by the diminishment of desserts at midrange restaurants, which after the recession of 2008 began to shed pastry chefs, unable to justify the expense for a course that yields little profit. As restaurant desserts have become simpler and homier — oliveoil cake, anything with chocolate — once plainspoken baked goods have turned rococo, offering an aura of luxury, enhanced by how difficult they are to procure before selling out each morning. At $4 to $8 each, these small but elaborate edifices seem worthier than the run-of-the-mill pastries available at every urban corner deli The decadence of these pastries and curbside coffee cart, enabling is matched by the virtuosity of their their artisans to cover the everconstruction and their element increasing cost of basic ingredients, of surprise: They are as much for particularly butter, whose price hit a historic high last year. beholding as for eating. Indeed, French butter, which has a higher percentage of fat and a pronounced tang from cultured cream, it’s the croissant that’s seen as desserts, have remained static over time: is so desirable across the globe, it’s being in danger of degradation: the starting to disappear from grocery Blancmange, a molded milk pudding, noble, labor-intensive French shelves in France. This is partly was once a chicken casserole; craggy pastry sullied by its union with the coconut Italian-Jewish macaroons share because more people are making crude, arriviste American doughnut pastries than ever before; as a French ancestry (going back to early Sicilian or muffin. (Another iteration was professor explained to The Economist pasta) with the polished round French unveiled in January by Vive la Tarte in November, ‘‘China has discovered macarons that have ruffled hems, in San Francisco: the tacro, a savory croissants.’’ But if the trend continues, which languished as solitary disks until pork- or chicken-stuffed taco with the croissant as we know it — a someone sandwiched them around a croissant shell.) straightforward compact of butter, ganache a little over a century ago. If anything, today’s nouvelle pastries flour, milk, sugar, yeast and salt — may mark a return to the spirit championed be no more. And in its place? These YET THE CROISSANT itself was born overgrown crescents too big to fit by Marie-Antoine Carême, the early of crossed borders. The butter-laden in the palm of the hand, spangled and 19th-century forefather of French layered dough has roots in medieval cooking, inventor of the soufflé and the swagged, glutted with fillings, arrayed Arab practice, and the pastry’s shape like objets d’art in austere concretecroquembouche and architect of comes from the Viennese kipferl, monumental confectionery centerpieces walled patisseries where the bakers said to have been modeled after the fuss like apothecaries. They’re absurd that rose up to three feet — nearly as Islamic crescent borne on the banners until you try them: salty and sweet high as the sculptured hairstyles of his of 17th-century Ottoman invaders. and shattering everywhere, leaving late namesake, Marie Antoinette, the (Although this back story is likely behind smears of cream and telltale Austrian princess whose own love for apocryphal, in 2013 a rebel stronghold butter fingerprints. The croissant is viennoiserie may have inspired the in Syria banned croissants as symbols dead; long live the croissant. myth of her declaring, ‘‘Let them eat of colonialism.) Few dishes, let alone
RETROUCHING: ANONYMOUS RETOUCH; PHOTOGRAPHER ASSISTANTS: KARL LEITZ, CALEB ANDRIELLA; ASSISTANT STYLIST: JESSE HASKO
FOOD MATTERS THINGS 30 T QATAR: THE NEW YORK TIMES STYLE MAGAZINE
And still people line up for Ansel’s cronuts today, at his outposts in Tokyo, London and Los Angeles, where seasonal flavors like pineapplechocolate-basil and eggnog-caramel are introduced monthly, for we are not yet immune to the novelty of pastry portmanteaus. The cruffin, made of croissant dough fastidiously draped in muffin tins to achieve a bouffant’s rise, was invented the same year as the cronut by the pastry chef Kate Reid of Lune Croissanterie in Melbourne, Australia. When another Melbourne native, Ry Stephen (currently of New York’s Supermoon), started making the puffy hybrids at San Francisco’s Mr. Holmes Bakehouse in 2014, his curd-filled cruffins proved so popular that a burglar broke in one night and ignored the cash register and equipment, grabbing only a binder of recipes. Like the cronut, these latter-day pastries — rustic kouign-amanns at Sugarbloom laminated with white miso; éclairs at patisserie Chanson entombed under Day-Glo plaques of painted chocolate — draw skepticism in part because they’re so swiftly and widely worshipped. In a culture beholden to images, it’s easy to simultaneously embrace and dismiss them as idle provocations. But for all the black garlic in the dough, the kimchi-spiked filling, the blood orange slices mashed on top, they are still viennoiserie, made in accordance with French tradition, precisionengineered with high-grade butter. (Stephen, for instance, is faithful to the revered Beurre d’Isigny, imported from Normandy.) In the croissants and their variations, the layers are as distinct as ribs, from slabs of cold butter immured in fold after fold of dough; the interior resembles a honeycomb of air, due to steam released during baking as the butter slowly melts. Some mock these as ‘‘Frankenpastries,’’ a term with echoes of ‘‘Frankenfood,’’ coined in 1992 by an English professor at Boston College expressing dismay over genetically engineered crops. That label is tongue-in-cheek, though just as Mary Shelley’s fevered novel hints at societal fears of miscegenation and ‘‘impurity,’’ the notion that these baked goods represent unholy unions suggests that there are clear borders in the culinary world that one ought not cross. Two centuries ago, the French led a shift from free-form cooking to codified techniques and built a system for achieving and recognizing mastery that still defines the professional kitchen, pastry or otherwise. So inevitably
Embellished Sandals
The laid-back staple makes a statement when bejeweled, tasseled or splashed in Pop Art color.
Photographs by Mari Maeda and Yuji Oboshi
Clockwise from top left: Missoni, $1,230. Suecomma Bonnie, $400. Miu Miu, $690. Tod’s, $995. Marni, $990. Dorothee Schumacher, $480. Prada, price on request. Marc Jacobs, $395. Carven, $850.
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CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: MISSONI SANDALS, SIMILAR STYLES MISSONI.COM. SUECOMMA BONNIE SANDALS, SHOPBOP.COM. MIU MIU SANDALS, MIUMIU.COM. TOD’S SANDALS, TODS.COM. MARNI SANDALS, (212) 343-3912. DOROTHEE SCHUMACHER SANDALS, DOROTHEE-SCHUMACHER.COM. PRADA SANDALS, (212) 334-8888. MARC JACOBS SANDALS, MARCJACOBS.COM. CARVEN SANDALS, CARVEN.COM
MARKET REPORT
OBJECTS
Bold Bedfellows
Large but surprisingly spare statement watches.
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THINGS
Photographs by Anthony Cotsifas Styled by Haidee Findlay-Levin
Left: Cartier Santos de Cartier, $37,000, cartier.com. Right: Cartier Tank Louis Cartier, $27,000.
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Bulgari Octo Roma, $13,900, bulgari.com.
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PHOTO ASSISTANTS: KARL LEITZ AND CALEB ANDRIELLA. SET ASSISTANTS: RAYMOND YOOK AND DAN MONDRAGON
Bell & Ross BR03-92 Horoblack, $3,400, bellross.com.
THINGS
OBJECTS
APPAREL
A Mischievous Stitch A self-professed off-kilter artist of an unconventional medium teams up with Weekend Max Mara to bring some jazz to formal daywear. By Debrina Aliyah
of Embroidery in South Korea and, most recently, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and the Toile de Jouy Museum in Josas, France. “I wanted to embroider Maori face tattoos onto 18th-century figures, but there are very few toile prints available to accomplish this effectively, so I adjusted the concept and things just took off from there,” he explains. After attending the University of the Arts in Philadelphia to study surface design, he devoted his studies to the great books of Western civilization at St John's College in Santa Fe and received a BA as a math and philosophy major. After a brief stint working as an art director on Madison Avenue, he started a small design firm cheekily named Historically Inaccurate Decorative Arts, where he centered his design interests.Adopting an organic approach to his creative
Below: Saja calls his work “interferences”.
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PHOTO COURTESY OF GEORGIA KOKOLIS
GIVE RICHARD SAJA a piece of toile de jouy and he will probably return it with a little zestful addition to put a smile on your face. If anything, the artist has in recent years helped put the spotlight back on this traditional French fabric style that at one point was mostly relegated to the realms of tapestry and homeware. But in the hands of Saja, idyllic countryside scenes get a colorful embroidery uplift to reflect a modern notion, sometimes even a little devilish but at most times just a mischievous twist. He calls them “interferences”, these embroidered additions to the original prints on the toiles. And these interpretations have won him international attention, having been exhibited in hometown New York, Paris, London, Berlin, the National Museum
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work, Saja embraces spontaneity in deciding how the embroidery will tell a new story on the original toile print. “At best, there’s a theme. And colors are chosen beforehand but everything else is spontaneous,” he says. Perhaps it was this off-the-cuff spirit that caught the eye of Weekend Max Mara’s creative team that has been flying the flag of experimentation and collaboration in recent seasons. The brand’s Signature Collection is a collaborative effort with artists as an opportunity to test new printing techniques and materials, and to encourage new design perspectives. That, and the fact that toile de jouy is a fabric that gels with the spirit of the brand in both its tradition and its irony. For this Trophy Day collaboration, Saja’s embroidery techniques embellish silk and cotton toile de jouy textiles in a collection designed for the annual Royal Ascot races. Mirroring the artist’s offbeat interpretations on traditional prints, the collection brings a colorful and unexpected aesthetics to the rigid formal daywear rules of the races. “I attend the Kentucky Derby in Louisville annually and I channelled some of those memories into the embroidery, adorning the figures in bright and festive party attire,” says Saja. Rigorously adhering to Royal Ascot’s dress code,
ABOVE: PHOTO COURTESY OF WEEKEND BY MAX MARA; BELOW: CARLA GULER
36 T QATAR: THE NEW YORK TIMES STYLE MAGAZINE
Above: Sketches from the Trophy Day collection; below: Actress Margaret Clunie in the collection campaign.
Clockwise from top: Up-close look of Saja’s embroidery on the pieces; separates designed to adhere to Ascot Race’s dress codes.
shirt. The artist’s embroideries also extend into a small selection of shoes and bags that make the perfect accoutrement to a traditional top-to-toe race day outfit. “All the pieces of this capsule have been produced precisely with these rules in mind. The mix and match allows you to be dressed adequately for this particular event and yet maintain the everyday freshness of our brand’s DNA,” the brand’s design team says. Saja envisions a woman of both style and humor to carry off the irony of the pieces. “An evolved and intelligent woman who embraces patterns and textures,” he adds. This muse comes in the form of English actress Margaret Clunie, who plays the
Duchess of Sutherland in TV series Victoria. The unconventional beauty will be attending the muchcelebrated Royal Enclosure during the Ascot Races this month in pieces from the collection.
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PHOTO COURTESY OF WEEKEND BY MAX MARA
the pieces are rendered in a unique colorway where embroideries are positioned differently from one another. His irreverent takes on the classic textile focus on the embellishing of 17th century-style horses and riders. “I tried to capture the essence of a holiday - fun and frivolity rippling through the prints and textures in the embroidery,” explains Saja. The ten-piece collection features a color palette of dark to light blue hues, ivory to white, and orange. Key pieces include a thigh-length overcoat of silk organdie, a cotton piquet blouse with voluminous sleeve detailing, cropped cotton trousers with a slight kick-flare and a cotton poplin
THINGS QATAR
MARKET REPORT
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Pleasant soft shades to match sun-kissed summer skin.
Clockwise from top left: Calice sleeveless feather gown, QR31,600, Vivetta. Tri-color kaftan, QR3,100, Dima Ayad. Lena pintuck twill tunic, QR2,708, Zero + Maria Cornejo. Silk-blend twisted dress, QR2,400, Lemaire. Tie-front cotton-jersey t-shirt, QR780, Cédric Charlier. Harem pants with side stripes, QR3,220, Marc Jacobs. Wool crepe feather jacket, QR4,980, Christopher Kane.
CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: VIVETTA, DIMA AYAD, ZERO + MARIA CORNEJO, LEMAIRE, CÉDRIC CHARLIER, MARC JACOBS, CHRISTOPHER KANE.
38 T QATAR: THE NEW YORK TIMES STYLE MAGAZINE
By Debrina Aliyah
May - June 2018 162 Furniture as One-of-a-Kind Art 168 Marc Camille Chaimowicz’s Interior Worlds 174 Gotland’s Modernist Revolution
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JASON LARKIN
Paper flowers and a vase sit on a table in the study of Chaimowicz’s new flat in Vauxhall.
A Chair (Not Made) for Sitting Artists have long been interested in the domestic space, but as the distinction between art and design becomes ever more blurred, more artists are making objects that function, and more designers are making sculpture.
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Plus: Five designers create original furniture, exclusively for T.
By Nikil Saval Photographs by Anthony Cotsifas Set Design by Jill Nicholls
WHEN WE TALK about artists making furniture, an old debate over whether design counts as art (and vice versa) rises once again to the surface, like a shark baited with chum. Furniture designers aren’t, by the logic of the category, really artists, and artists, by that same logic, must normally be engaged in a higher pursuit than furniture. Only on occasion — thanks to a creative block, a desire to make (more) money, or a temporary absence of mind — do artists descend from the empyrean to sanctify the grimy world of designer-makers. Furniture, lovely though it sometimes may be, is functional and commercial; art is timeless and to be contemplated. That few artists or designers today would accept the terms of this debate is in part because of the 1970s and ’80s rise of postmodernism in both art and design. Postmodernists made an infamous show of confusing distinctions, and the idea that an artist’s work could also include chairs and tables became commonplace. But this doesn’t imply that the essence of both art and design has been entirely subverted. In 1994, the Austrian sculptor Franz West placed couches on the roof of the Dia Center for the Arts. The institution presented this act as an installation, and West also felt the need to justify this type of work in art-theoretical discourse, generating a Latinate category for his practice — ‘‘active reception’’ — that instantly made problematic the thing he was supposedly trying to bring about: the unity of art and design. Donald Judd, the most famous artist-turnedfurniture designer, first tried to make furniture in the mid-’60s by attempting to turn one of his rectangular volumes into a coffee table. It was a bad table, he concluded, and he threw it away, as he recalled in his 1993 essay ‘‘It’s Hard to Find a Good Lamp,’’ in which he writes, ‘‘If a chair or a building is not functional, if it appears to be only art, it is ridiculous.’’ AND YET, THESE generic boundaries have been collapsing for decades. We now seem to have reached the inevitable conclusion that form and function are increasingly indistinguishable. More and more artists produce functional commercial objects — whether it’s Sterling Ruby making working stoves (even if the ones cast in bronze look like imposing sculptures) or Robert Gober making wallpaper (even if that wallpaper was on view in the artist’s 2014 retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art) — and more and more designers are creating furniture that merely skirts the border of function. Rick Owens, a fashion designer who first ventured into home goods in 2007, makes plenty of usable chairs and tables, but he also makes the occasional plywood daybed that one wouldn’t dare recline on; his work is sometimes more of an aesthetic exercise, and it can look more like a geometrical study by minimalist sculptor Robert Morris than a domestic object. (Tellingly, Owens shows his designs with Salon 94, a New York gallery that formally opened a design program last year.) Everyone now is an artist, and anything is possible. There are cynical reasons for this, of course — art generally sells for more than furniture, so to blur the lines between a piece of furniture and a work of art means that a person can sell furniture for more money. But artists have long had a fascination with functional objects. The origins of the modern attempt to unite the decorative and the fine arts may lie with William Morris: English poet; maker of furniture, books and wallpaper; and revolutionary socialist. Working over the course of the late 19th century, he was inspired by a romanticized idea of the Middle Ages. Back then, before our fallen age, the figure of the craftsman and
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A Chair for Twins to Intertwine by Faye Toogood When the London-based designer Faye Toogood was pregnant with her twin daughters last year, she found herself dwelling on the image of a double-yolked egg, which conveyed the squishy comfort of snuggling in a warm space. Living part of the year with her family in their country house in Hampshire, she would occasionally come across double yolks in the fresh, organic eggs there, reminding her of the serendipity that can happen when you embrace nature. ‘‘I really wanted to keep that feeling,’’ she says of this cotton love seat. Using canvas isn’t unusual for Toogood, though generally she has reserved it for her unisex garments; her furniture tends to be minimal and sculptural, rendered from materials like resin and fiberglass. But since she finished the twin seat she’s come to see it as a new prototype for furniture that brings a relaxed edge to her clean and rigorous aesthetic.
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the fine artist were indissolubly united. Painting and sculpture had ritual func- functional of all: the Sussex rush-seated armchair, designed in the 1860s by tions, and the decoration of rooms was not reserved for specialists in interiors; Philip Speakman Webb. With the nostalgia embodied in its fine wood-turning, the names of artists, untethered from notions of auteurism and genius, were it was both profoundly simple and rustically handcrafted, syncretically calling considered obscure and unremarkable. It was, in Morris’s view, a freer time, with to mind rural chair-making of ages past. a more consistently beautiful standard of art. The market subverted Morris’s ideals several times over, and now the rush What had separated the artist and the craftsman, and relegated the designer chair sells for upward of $1,500 on 1stdibs.com. But his ideal persisted through to the category of the ‘‘lesser arts’’? For Morris, the answer was capitalism. It the 20th century, which was full of rearguard efforts on the part of the socially divided labor into infinitesimally smaller functions and thrived on creating minded to return furniture to the world of the arts. Walter Gropius, the founder of inequality between forms of art. Even within the practice of decorative arts, it A Chair to Freeze Time by Andrea Tognon made access to fine goods a luxury. If art The architect and designer Andrea Tognon works and lives in an industrial site at the edge of Milan that he has transformed into a verdant is ‘‘ever to be strong enough to help mangarden of Zen minimalism. He is dreamy and cerebral by nature, which animates his work for Céline’s retail stores, with their veiny pastel marble and contrasting corrugated metal. Little wonder one of his favorite books is Italo Calvino’s physics-rich short story collection ‘‘t zero,’’ kind once more,’’ Morris wrote in 1880, especially the title tale, which takes place in the mind of a lion hunter coolly estimating if the arrow he has just shot at a pouncing beast will ‘‘she must gather strength in simple plackill it before the lion can reach him. ‘‘It’s about extending mentally the value of a single instant of time infinitely,’’ he says. To make a chair that es.’’ Accordingly, one of Morris & Co.’s might convey that paradox, he cast a square concrete seat, a round base made from concrete with bits of exotic marble swirled in, brass hardware and a rounded back covered in fox fur. ‘‘To experience all these sensations simultaneously is a way to feel more alive in the moment.’’ most successful objects was the most
the Bauhaus school in Weimar, Germany, called the synthesis of arts and crafts ‘‘total architecture.’’ Artists entered the school and were trained to make flatware and lounges. From the world of industrial design, the spirit of the all-encompassing nature of design is captured in Charles Eames’s phrase ‘‘Everything is architecture.’’ The phrase seems to suggest that there are no boundaries to the scope of design. The lissome, molded plywood shells of his and his wife Ray Eames’s
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lounges, partly rooted in Ray’s studies of abstraction in painting, evoke the visual space where design gives way to sculpture. These convergences between art and design through furniture reached their apex, as well as their dissolution, with the products of the Ettore Sottsass-led Memphis group in the early 1980s, at the onset of the era of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan. These were lurid, insanely colorful objects that were nonetheless functional. Sottsass, trying to explain the wacky sensuality of the work, dubbed it a ‘‘cauldron of boilA Shelf at Last for the Great Books That Have Come With Me Around the World by Wonmin Park ing mutations.’’ The iconic Carlton bookcase’s Furniture designer Wonmin Park has never placed a premium on the easy comforts of home. He left his native Seoul at 24 geometric elements called up Art Nouveau; its base, after a few years in architecture school and, after a year in London, enrolled in the notoriously rigorous design program in Eindhoven, Netherlands. Although both his Dutch and English were shaky, he stayed in the isolated town for nine years, resembling concrete, quoted Modernism; its lamieventually developing his Haze series, geometric tables and chairs made from colored resin. Lately Park, who is now based in Paris, nate shelf-ends echoed the tackiest of kitchen has begun to work with aluminum, and for this project, mixed it for the first time with resin. ‘‘The perfect chance to find products. As with the American art world of the out how the two materials might interact was to make a place for these books that have inspired me through a very long road: Matisse, Brancusi, Serra, Carl Andre,’’ he says. ‘‘They are at the heart of my work.’’ ’80s, a commercial madness and media frenzy
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A Chair to Practice Ascetic Discipline and Reach Transcendence by Pedro Paulo Venzon Pedro Paulo Venzon drew on the history of his native Brazil while it was under Portuguese rule to create this chair. The designer says he is interested in ‘‘objects of damnation’’ and their relation to colonial history and punishment. The chair recalls Venzon’s signature sleek and minimal designs, and its purpose is to take whoever sits in it into another dimension of contemplation. Though given Venzon’s preoccupation with damnation, it is perhaps unsurprising that it is not meant to be comfortable. Occasionally one must suffer in order to transcend.
infusing works like the artist Tom Sachs’s ‘‘Bitch Lounge’’ (1999). It has the leather finish of Mies van der Rohe’s Barcelona chairs, but in place of their rakish tilt, it is uncomfortably low to the ground and too short to lounge on. Somewhere between the desire to celebrate and the enduring desire to épater lies the artist Rachel Whiteread’s Daybed, designed in 1999 for the British furniture company SCP. Drawing on her earlier installations that explored the space underneath beds and tables, Whiteread extended the basic achievements of American minimalism — such as defining physical space around simultaneously mute and expressive objects — to create something functional. She wanted, she later said, to create a form A Speaker on Which to Rest the Perfect Gin and Tonic at Sunset by Michael Verheyden that would ‘‘entice you to lay on it but it is not realMichael Verheyden and his wife, Saartje Vereecke — who run their design practice from the industrial Belgian town of Genk ly that comfortable.’’ Austerity, hilarity, anger: with only two assistants because they want their own elaborate handiwork to remain at the forefront of their products — are, understandably, exhausted at day’s end. Although their work, which includes suede stools and delicately shaped marble Each is another mark of distinction, of the evervases, seems effortlessly pared down (a former model, Verheyden was mentored by Raf Simons, a master of the small, inflected growing refinement of an art market that, searching gesture), it is, in fact, all-involving, physically and emotionally. So after cleaning off his hands and walking across the street for new forms of exclusivity, at last colonizes the to their house, Verheyden, who plays guitar and sings in a band called In Trees, wants nothing more than to reconnect to a time when audio components were stunning pieces of furniture on their own, with a place of glory at the center of the house. place where you sit.
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RETOUCHING: ANONYMOUS RETOUCH. PHOTO ASSISTANTS: KARL LEITZ, CALEB ANDRIELLA, WEICHIA HUANG AND JESS KIRKHAM. SET ASSISTANT: TODD KNOPKE
seized the group. More than 2,000 people swarmed the opening of Memphis’s first show, in Milan in 1981. Sottsass, a utopian like Morris, Gropius and the Eameses, recognized a cynicism in the project he had started, and he soon abandoned it. ‘‘We did not expect such a response and I decided to leave Memphis in 1985,’’ he later explained, ‘‘when everything had become too exposed and had lost its meaning.’’ His statement could characterize the postmodernism of the 1980s and ’90s, at once delighting in exposure and oppressed by the spiritual and political void it revealed. The inverse of Memphis’s playful world was the spirit of aggression
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THE HOUSE IS NOT A HOME By Gaby Wood Photographs by Jason Larkin
Chaimowicz surrounded by his work — hand-drawn wall coverings and drapery — at his new home inside a recently constructed building commissioned by the artist’s gallery, Cabinet, in London.
‘‘I CAN’T QUITE deal with it,’’ says Marc Camille Chaimowicz, in considerable understatement, on moving from the London apartment he has spent the past 38 years living and making his art in. The flat is on the top floor of Hayes Court, a 19th-century red brick building in Camberwell, South London, an area long known for having successive waves of artists such as Frank Auerbach and Griselda Pollock. We are sitting in the kitchen, which is filled with appliances from when he first moved in: the 1970s. That was also the era in which Chaimowicz, who is about to have his first solo museum exhibition in the U.S., at the Jewish Museum in New York, began creating his distinct body of cross-disciplinary work, which explores ideas of domestic life through fully realized life-size room installations that he fills with furniture, ceramics, collages, wallpaper, textiles and sculptures, many of which are his own design. The influence of Chaimowicz’s work is hard to pinpoint, but everyone familiar with his art agrees that it is substantial. Is it his imagined rooms, so evocatively furnished as to suggest a story? Or his classic drawings, suggestive of abstracted body parts or fractured parentheses that appear on everything from wallpaper to murals to fabric? His persistently joyous sense of color? Most likely, it’s Chaimowicz’s anarchic lack of distinction between public art and private life that makes him a pioneer and also an enigma. ‘‘It’s not that he’s being directly copied by other artists,’’ says the British contemporary-art writer Louisa Buck. ‘‘But more that Chaimowicz has made a broad swath of practice permissible.’’ In the post-Pop world of his early career, the idea of calling a lampshade a work of art was sacrilegious; colors such as pastel pink or eau de nil — signature Chaimowicz hues — were anathema. Now, the hierarchies between art and ornament have dissolved, and Chaimowicz has emerged, in Buck’s estimation, ‘‘as a presiding force over a growing group of artists who are unashamedly playing with décor and environments,’’ Karen Kilimnik and Lucy McKenzie among them. His 2016 show at the Serpentine Gallery in London encapsulated both the singularity of the artist’s aesthetic and the diversity of his vision: three rooms, each appointed with his colorful retro-futuristic furniture, dreamlike illustrated wallpapers and abstract sculptures made from repurposed items such as vases or jugs or chairs. ‘‘Chaimowicz has suddenly become an urgent artist in the age of the internet, as boundaries become more porous,’’ says the Serpentine’s artistic director Hans Ulrich Obrist. Kelly Taxter, curator of the Jewish Museum show, suggests he’s particularly interesting now ‘‘because the work is in one sense very esoteric and abstract, but it’s also totally approachable. Everyone recognizes a chair and understands wallpaper. So there’s an immediate understanding of his art, coupled with the layers of poetry behind it.’’ All of these layers — the everyday and the intellectual, the romantic and the rigorous, the domestic and the dramatic — are present in both the home he is leaving behind and his new one, located just over a mile away in Vauxhall, in a 12-sided free-standing brick-and-concrete building commissioned by Cabinet, the London gallery that represents Chaimowicz as well as Ed Atkins and Lucie Stahl. Designed by the British firm Trevor Horne Architects in collaboration with Cabinet’s artists, the structure’s three lowermost floors serve as the gallery’s showspace; above are two floors of residential apartments, including Chaimowicz’s. He’s contributed to the building’s facade, designing its large, jaggedly geometric windows, set in natural oak frames, an indication of Chaimowicz’s innate inclination to live among his art pieces. Unsurprisingly, the interiors of both the Hayes Court and Cabinet flats keenly resemble his work. Each is constructed almost entirely from his imagination, from the lamps to the drapes to the wallpaper. As more than one curator who has worked with Chaimowicz has pointed out, his installations are Gesamtkunstwerk, or ‘‘total work of art,’’ and in Taxter’s view they align the interior of the home with ‘‘the psychological and interior life of the artist.’’ Spry and dressed in a corduroy jacket, a chevron scarf and a beige trilby, Chaimowicz gives me a tour of his Hayes Court flat, which consists of three humble rooms. The question of what the space will become is on his mind. It must live on in some way, he feels. As a museum dedicated to his work? A short-lived art installation? Its future is still uncertain, reliant perhaps on a benefactor. ‘‘Is that a real Warhol?’’ I ask, trying to stand back in the narrow corridor, papered with a whimsical white-and-gray Chaimowicz-designed pattern, to get a better view of a purple screen print of an electric chair hanging on the wall. ‘‘Yes,’’ he replies,
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One of the earliest artists to blur the lines between art and interior design, Marc Camille Chaimowicz is on the eve of his first solo museum show in America. Now, he opens the doors to his private world: a trapped-in-time London flat he’s inhabited for almost 40 years and the new, vibrantly modern space in which he’ll spend his next chapter.
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with a sidelong smile. ‘‘Don’t tell anyone, will you? It’s quite discreet.’’ Then he considers the question again, and adds another layer of mischief. ‘‘What is real? ’’ he asks, rhetorically. He shrugs. ‘‘But it’s a signed edition.’’ In the room nearest the front door is Chaimowicz’s archive: documentation of his work organized into file boxes, a collection of decorated plates and another of ordinary, bourgeois-colored glass bowls and vases. In the room opposite this one is where he draws, a sunny space with a drafting table and bookshelves dotted with smallscale models and color charts. (When Taxter visited, she discovered there were nearly 100 maquettes of furniture designs — they were, she says, ‘‘intimate and beautiful,’’ and around half of them are on view at the Jewish Museum). The rest is a faded mise-en-scène, an ‘‘art scene,’’ as a crime scene bears the traces of a crime. Everything feels like evidence of a life lived, as if the flat has already become a tribute, wonderfully trapped in time. This is in part because the furnishings not created by Chaimowicz are either design classics (by Otto Wagner and Eileen Gray) or simple, almost suburban, midcentury pieces (a ’50s-era gas stove, red glossy chairs, ’70s-era beige and salmon carpet). In the bathroom with a forever-dripping tap, the walls above the tub have been painted by Chaimowicz in Matisse-like patterns in his signature sun-faded, candy-colored palette. They are faint, repeated, reminiscent of something — colors inspired by Bonnard, perhaps, or Marie Laurencin, or textile sketches by Vanessa Bell. In the living room, which is papered in those same shades, a photograph of his previous apartment, a subsidized studio in the East End, where he lived briefly in the mid-70s, hangs on the wall, creating the effect that each of his homes relates to the next like a Russian nesting doll. THE FOLLOWING DAY we meet in the new flat, where he is already sleeping, liberated, he says. ‘‘It’s the purest pleasure, partly because I’m able to break free from my past.’’ The walls already bear the mark of his arrival — he’s left most of them bare and freshly plastered, ‘‘what the Romans called patina,’’ he says. At the entrance to the kitchen, he’s covered a door in a purple, pink and orange bamboo stalk-print laminate of his own design. Inside the kitchen, similar patterns are collaged on the wall with many others — overlaid, clashing, apparently as random as strips of papier mâché, yet oddly classical in their prettiness. A curtain in his bedroom — echoing the graphic he recently designed for the cover of the London Underground pocket map — was made from fabric he designed with a pink, white and yellow chainlike motif. ‘‘I’ve declared this flat a white-free space,’’ he says with a smile, revealing what appears to be a long-held yearning to live and create his art somewhere shiny and new. If Chaimowicz’s work is hard to classify, that’s partly because its impact is sensory and indirect, like a mist. Memory, home, reverie, nostalgia, longing: These are all evoked. In a recent exhibition called ‘‘Tears Shared’’ at the South London gallery Flat Time House, Chaimowicz showed a collection of jewel-toned glassware. He arranged the pieces against a conservatory wall. When the light caught them, it scattered multicolored rays around the room. In a film, such a sequence of rainbow refractions might be used to summon a childhood memory, or trigger a sunlit meditation. Here, one is meant to simply bask in the cast light and form a story of one’s own. Taxter compares the experience to reading a book: ‘‘You’re reading a story but you and the person next to you have a completely different projection of what the characters sound and look like.’’ In the installation that launched his career in 1972, ‘‘Celebration? Realife,’’ he filled a former ballroom at Gallery House in London with cheap lights, everyday detritus and found objects — a scene that looked like the aftermath of an explosion in a dime store or a flea market or a disco. Then he invited viewers into another room to discuss the work over coffee. Also as part of the artwork, Chaimowicz slept in the building at night throughout the period of the exhibition. The work that anchors the Jewish Museum show, which opened March 16, is called ‘‘Here and There,’’ and was first installed in 1978 across two rooms at the Hayward Gallery in London. One room evoked a domestic interior (‘‘here’’) and the other recreated a more formal gallery-type space (‘‘there’’), with the intent of transferring art from the lived life into the exhibited one. That room contained collages of black-and-white photographs on movable panels. Because Chaimowicz works in a way that is site-specific, each of his shows has its own set of considerations. The iteration of ‘‘Here and There’’ for the Jewish Museum has been conceived because the building was once a home: Its history as a 1908 mansion belonging to the wealthy Warburg family and its ornate interior have become part of the story Chaimowicz has chosen to tell. His own story is one he reveals with less ease, and explains, perhaps, why he works in refractions. He was born in postwar Paris, to a Polish father and a French mother. They never spoke about the war. ‘‘We don’t talk about that. We never did,’’ he says, as if his parents were alive and all the family rules still in place. His father, who had a degree in mathematics, got a job at Institut Curie in Paris and later became involved in early electronics. When Chaimowicz, who has two younger sisters, was about 8, the family moved to the U.K. ‘‘You see, my parents were very naïve,’’ he explains with his sly smile. ‘‘They’d heard that the English education system was very good. They hadn’t heard about the class system.’’ Chaimowicz, who spoke no English, arrived in the postwar period when the two-tier British education system left pupils that were less academic out in the cold. Armed, at 16,
Clockwise from top left: paper flowers and a vase sit on a table in the study of Chaimowicz’s new flat in Vauxhall; the artist’s new bedroom, brightened by furniture and a blanket of his own design; the facade of the Cabinet gallery building in Vauxhall, for which Chaimowicz imagined the graphic windows; a hand-painted mural in the bathroom of Hayes Court; Chaimowicz’s old flat has a time-warp feeling, thanks to a wealth of early 20th- and midcentury furniture, including these 1930s chairs in the sitting room; almost everything inside the Cabinet gallery space is custom fit, including the sunburst fluorescent tube lighting on the ceiling; for nearly 40 years, Chaimowicz created collages, tiny furniture prototypes and whimsical illustrations for his textiles, wallpaper and glassware inside this workspace at Hayes Court.
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GUTTER CREDIT TK.
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Having remained virtually unchanged since the ’70s, the Hayes Court flat — filled with a mixture of Chaimowicz’s work, vintage furniture and ’50s appliances — is a work of art, a time capsule and a living space all in one.
WHEN CHAIMOWICZ GLOSSED over his parents’ part in the war, I thought we’d have to return to that subject somehow. Earlier, he’d told me, apropos of the New York venue, ‘‘I have no connection with the Jewish faith whatsoever,’’ and although I understood the point about his upbringing and his mother’s Catholicism, it seemed to leave part of the story untold. He suggested that we do some of the interview in French, and his childhood seemed a good topic to cover that way. We switched languages. The era and timbre of Chaimowicz’s French is magnificent: rounded, classical, an accent that barely exists in contemporary France. It added a layer of intrigue: His native voice belongs not to a place but to the past. ‘‘I grew up in Montparnasse,’’ he began. He spoke of envying his sisters’ dolls, and weekends spent in the suburbs with his maternal grandmother, who had warehouses she lent to people who ran flea markets. ‘‘I spent every weekend chatting to the stallholders,’’ Chaimowicz remembered. ‘‘It was wonderful for a boy of 6, 7, 8 years old.’’ The nostalgia for such things is clearly embedded in his work, which incorporates found domestic objects (like the colored glass). And just when the Proustian reverie seemed about to take off, Chaimowicz said, by way of sudden punctuation: ‘‘So, that’s childhood.’’ ‘‘Wait,’’ I said. ‘‘You haven’t spoken about your father.’’ ‘‘I haven’t spoken about . . . ?’’ ‘‘Your father.’’ ‘‘My father?’’ ‘‘Yes.’’ The equivocation felt, at the time, oddly prolonged. Most of what Chaimowicz told me about his father he preferred not to make public. We spoke about the reasons why — since an exhibition at the Jewish Museum would seem to precipitate some discussion of a Jewish link. Chaimowicz felt his father had suffered enough; his past had been taboo in his lifetime, and it was only right that it should remain so. Yet in respecting his need to preserve his father’s privacy a point is made sideways: a point about history and identity, about how one can be excluded from groups to which one might be expected to belong; about fear, about memory, about gray areas of belief. And all of this offers some purchase on Chaimowicz’s slippery lifelong subjects: home and remembrance, above all. Chaimowicz’s father was born Jewish but was not religious. His father’s father was one of the founders of the Socialist party in Poland, and anti-Zionist. Chaimowicz père escaped to France and married Chaimowicz’s mother; they brought up their children in the Catholic faith. Once they moved to Britain, the children had French and English culture to manage: They couldn’t cope with a third. The link to Poland was, essentially, erased. Meanwhile, his father’s family disappeared. Chaimowicz suggests that, like many fathers of that era, his was not very present. But there was a moment of rapprochement between them. Chaimowicz was asked to have a show in Warsaw in 1993. He accepted as his father was dying in the hospital. The Warsaw curators wanted to publish one of his sketchbooks in facsimile, and he drew, as a frontispiece, a picture of his father. He’d been to see him in the hospital, and he drew him from memory. He’d never done anything like that before. The resulting resemblance was uncanny. We pause over this. The story makes a much broader sort of sense. His father might once have known him as a boy who could draw, yet memory and intimacy are what Chaimowicz has made his materials. In his hands, even a complicated reminiscence can become something lightly and mysteriously rendered, with the restorative force of a fleeting resurrection.
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with very few qualifications, he went to Ealing Art College, then to the bohemian Camberwell School of Art, and did a postgraduate degree in painting at the famous Slade School of Fine Art. By the time he arrived, he had burned all of his paintings. He respected theorists and conceptual artists such as Victor Burgin and Gustav Metzger, yet he couldn’t identify with any of them. Sympathetic to emerging currents in feminism, he found that intellectual art world very male. ‘‘My mind was drawn to left-wing ideology,’’ he recalls. ‘‘But the left-wing practice produced art that I could not enjoy. It was lacking in pleasure, color and sensuality. All the things that matter to me.’’ At Slade, the classical premise that you must suffer for your art was pervasive, but Chaimowicz was having none of it. ‘‘The people I was looking at didn’t seem to have suffered to that extent. Fragonard seemed to have a great time. I thought: I want to be like Fragonard!’’ After graduation, Chaimowicz was awarded a studio space in East London by Acme, a nonprofit program that partners with London art schools to grant budding artists a subsidized place to create, and he volunteered in a fabric design studio in Lyon. As his interest in the applied arts evolved, his sense of work as an evolution of his life emerged too. Bonnard and Vuillard were a guiding light. ‘‘It was a very rich period in terms of my practice. I’d think: I want some wallpaper but there’s nothing I like and I can’t really afford it anyway. Maybe I could make my own wallpaper,’’ he says. ‘‘I was prioritizing my lifestyle, to the extent that there were complaints about me to the head office. Other artists were walking down the road seeing me on the ground floor of my studio with floral curtains, drinking tea with friends and socializing, and they’d say: ‘This guy’s not working! He’s fraudulent, he’s wasting precious space!’ ’’ Out of that very transgression, Chaimowicz built a career.
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The minimalist plaster box that serves as architect Bolle Tham’s vacation home rises from a ridge above one of Gotland’s stony beaches.
ARCHITECTURE OF SUBVERSION Why some of Sweden’s most inspiring — and disruptive — modernist structures are being built on the discreet, traditionbound island of Gotland By Nancy Hass Photographs by Mikael Olsson
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HE DANISH-NORWEGIAN WRITER Aksel Sandemose was a minor literary figure, a notorious crank, when he wrote the 1933 novel containing a set of commandments that would become one of Scandinavia’s defining social texts. ‘‘A Fugitive Crosses His Tracks’’ is a barely veiled send-up of his hometown, Nykobing Mors (renamed Jante) and an uncomfortably close-to-the-bone satire of Nordic conformity. Jante is governed by the ‘‘Law of Jante,’’ rules for living that reflect both Scandinavia’s ethnic homogeneity and its long-held belief that people are happier when both pleasure and pain are spread among all citizens: You shall not believe that you are someone. You shall not believe that you are as good as we are. You shall not believe that you are any wiser than we are. You shall never indulge in the conceit of imagining that you are better than we are. You shall not believe that you know more than we do. You shall not believe that you are more important than we are. You shall not believe that you are going to amount to anything. You shall not laugh at us. You shall not believe that anyone cares about you. You shall not believe that you can teach us anything. These days, Scandinavians bristle at the mention of the Law of Jante. Such stereotypes, they insist, no longer have such a stronghold in a modern world, one where Stockholm now leads in billion-dollar technology companies per capita, second only to Silicon Valley. Yet it is hard not to think of Sandemose as you drive along the winter-deserted roads of Gotland, Sweden’s largest island, a 40-minute flight south from Stockholm. About the size of Long Island and flat as a soccer field, it is the country’s sunniest locale. (Admittedly, that doesn’t say much in a place that spends most of the year in frigid darkness.) And along with Faro,
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its companion island off its northern tip, it is forever associated with the director Ingmar Bergman, who set many of his greatest films here and lived in Faro for the last decades of his life. In July and early August, Gotland is a tourist mecca; young professionals, starved for heat and light, party in the beer gardens of Visby, a port town of 24,300. An hour or two away, up and down the coasts, are the summer houses of the country’s politicians and business executives, fronting beaches dotted with rauks — gigantic, craggy sculptural formations unique to the area, as ghostly as something from Stonehenge, created by ice-age reef erosions. Scarlet poppies and brilliant blue viper’s bugloss carpet the meadows and line the roadside ditches. But by late August, tourist season is over. There is no gradual wind-down here, just a sudden deflation, like the circus pulling up stakes in a rush. Unlike the Stockholm Archipelago, a set of islands near the capital that Swedes visit year-round, Gotland seems to disappear like Brigadoon. A number of restaurants and inns outside of Visby, including the minimalist 19-suite Fabriken Furillen, owned by the former photographer Johan Hellstrom, shut down, and the flora dies as well, laying bare the local architecture. So stripped-down and uniform are the farmhouses of Gotland’s interior, no matter what century they were built in they seem to have been drawn by a 5-year-old: rectangles topped with triangular roofs, each with a plain door and a few tiny frameless windows. The summer cottages along the largely unmarked roads are also free of embellishment: low-slung bungalows painted a familiar Falu red, the auburn-hued weather-resistant oil pigment derived from the copper mines of Dalarna, in central Sweden, during the 16th century. ‘‘People have always come to Gotland to
get back to tradition and nature,’’ says Joel Phersson, a 35-yearold architect who works and lives on the island. ‘‘If you were to tell your friends in Stockholm that you’re going to your family’s vacation house here, you’d perhaps be telegraphing that you are well off but very low-key. Ostentation is a high crime.’’ But recently, a generation of homeowners and architects, including Phersson’s firm Skalso, have started not just ignoring, but defying the Law of Jante. Working around restrictive zoning laws that prioritize ‘‘protection and preservation’’ of the island, which was settled more than 9,000 years ago as an agricultural hub, they have spent the last decade building contemporary houses as distinctive as the topography. From cast-concrete bunkers to glass-framed aeries, the new houses shock, subverting longestablished order with a cool blast of modernity, while also paying homage to the island’s chilly dignity.
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ANS MURMAN AND his wife, Ulla Alberts, architects who own a firm in Stockholm that often designs health spas, were in a perfect position to experiment on Gotland. The secluded parcel on which they built their Juniper House is owned by Alberts’s family; she spent barefoot summers in her parents’ still-standing red cottage. Before conceptualizing their own house, the couple designed a number of structures for relatives on the 2.2-acre plot, inadvertently creating a sort of stages-of-man evolutionary chart of their aesthetic. In addition to a studio that they made as newlyweds — little more than a shack — the property includes her brother’s unadorned two-story limestone farmhouse built in 2002 from plans that the 54-year-old Alberts drafted in
The director Ingmar Bergman’s study, preserved as part of a retreat for artists and writers on the island of Faro, north of Gotland. Opposite: the residence by married architects Hans Murman and Ulla Alberts is wrapped in a scrim printed with life-size photographs of the surrounding juniper trees.
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architecture school, as well as a 1,700-square-foot, midcenturyinflected villa with a peaked wooden roof and bright orange accents that the couple finished in 2014 for Ulla’s sister. Over a decade ago, they completed the home that would become their ultimate statement, a dwelling in dialogue with the thicket of 15-foot juniper trees in which it hides. To create its innovative cladding, the 71-year-old Murman photographed the conifers, then had the images transposed in 1:1 scale onto a vinyl scrim. The mural wraps around the building’s wooden exterior on a galvanized steel frame about two feet from the walls. The house, a mere 540 square feet puzzled out with the ingenuity of a yacht to accommodate their two sons, recedes into the forest during the day — somewhat of a poke to local officials who fretted that a modern structure would mar the landscape — yet glows at night like a botanical Noguchi lantern. ‘‘We are in our own world here,’’ Murman says. ‘‘Among these houses there is every era, every generation. Just walking around you can travel through time.’’ A 45-minute drive away, past a weathered windmill and fields of sheep fat with winter wool, Asa Myrdal Bratt has come from the mainland to meet me at her house. Built right on a rarely traveled road, it seems to rise from an empty field like a giant charred barn after a merciless prairie fire. That is precisely the effect that Stockholm-based architect Jens Enflo was seeking when his firm built it in collaboration with Deve Architects several years ago: ‘‘I wanted it to seem as though the land was just growing all the way through it,’’ the 42-year-old Enflo says. Clad in nearly black stained pine, a hue virtually unseen on Gotland and one that suggests shou sugi ban, the ancient Japanese burnt-timber
treatment, the structure plays with proportion and transparency in a painterly way, contrasting against the flat, tree-void site. Almost 80 feet long but just under 15 feet wide, with a peaked 22-foot ceiling and a single lofted bedroom, the house’s front and back walls are partially glass, as are most of its interior walls; the central area between the living room and the small guest wing holds a covered courtyard, completing the illusion of a raw, skeletal frame. Myrdal Bratt — a brand consultant in her 50s, who, with her husband, a doctor, bought the house in 2014 — says that the place is warm, even cozy, despite its openness; from the outside, it appears provocatively barren, a stripped-down interpretation of the working livestock barns that you can see in the distance.
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ot all of the several dozen modern houses on Gotland are entirely at peace with the island’s natural and agricultural history; some, in fact, actively challenge the surrounding landscape. Consider the harshly reductive house that the 48-year-old architect Bolle Tham’s firm built for his family: From the outside it resembles army barracks, with an exterior of local plaster, colored with carbon and troweled smooth atop a masonry core. Inside, all of the rooms face a central courtyard, giving it a snug, insular feel, though there are several wall-size windows that swing out like barn doors on summer days. Although it’s one level, some of the rooms demand several steps — a necessary design quirk after Tham resisted blasting the underlying rock to lay a uniform slab; he felt the house should follow the landscape’s topography. The living areas
Gotland’s typically flat meadowland seems to flow through the barnlike house created by Jens Enflo’s firm and Deve Architects. Opposite: a 43-foot missile silo contains a three-floor-deep marble-lined hammam inside a former Cold War bunker transformed into a home by the firm Skalso.
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are nearly naked, the bedrooms cell-like, the finishes plywood. ‘‘Gotland’s vacation homes had become cliché, so we thought it was time to do something that wasn’t a replica of an old limestone farmhouse,’’ he says. ‘‘We wanted to be in conversation with the past, but not just repeat it.’’ Still, Tham’s shed-like edifice seems recessive, even humble, compared with a collection of homes being built on the island’s Bungenas peninsula, a few miles from the seven-minute ferry to Faro. In 2007, the 49-year-old real-estate developer Joachim Kuylenstierna bought a gated 400 acres that had originally been a quarry and then, during the Cold War, the site for 100 bunkers. There are now more than 30 homes on Bungenas, in addition to a coffee house, a six-room hotel and a concert venue converted from an old barn. All the businesses and a majority of the homes have been designed by Skalso, the firm Kuylenstierna founded with Phersson and his fellow architect, the 38-year-old Erik Gardell, because there wasn’t anyone on the island who could shape the sort of avant-garde vacation community they desired. The commune alludes to the Sea Ranch, the meticulously planned 1960s utopia in Northern California — albeit modified to include Gotland’s bunkers, some of which Skalso modernized by scooping out enough earth on one side to allow for an entry, making them a kind of Swedish hobbit dwelling. Most of these subterranean residences, which owners tend to furnish with a sparseness that borders on clinical, are less than 600 square feet, a size that the economical Swedes deem sufficient for a family of four. But one owner, a Swedish industrialist who bought one of the largest bunkers in the development six years ago, asked Skalso to take the firm’s concept to astonishing depths, both aesthetically and literally. On approach, his For a guide of house appears to be a one-story ultra-Brutalist where to stay — and box, made from concrete — a material rarely used what to do — in Gotland, Sweden, for houses on Gotland — that had been poured visit tmagazine.com. into wooden molds to lend it a grain. Yet the 1,300-square-foot building that’s visible above ground, which includes hushed, honed public spaces in dark wood, a welded metal kitchen and two minimalist bedrooms, represents less than a fifth of the total living space: The rest is beneath grade, on three floors, descending nearly 50 feet. The excavation and underground construction process felt like laboring in the mines. Skalso preserved and exposed as much of the original concrete structure as possible, connecting a series of high-ceilinged, lavishly spare, skillfully lit rooms with a spiral, matte-black steel staircase. In addition to a vast dining room, there is a large, round marble-lined hammam installed in a former missile silo; the sky is visible through a glass porthole three flights above. Next to it is a ‘‘spa’’ with custom rubber sofas. Despite how sleek and chillingly soundproof the place is — you half-expect to hear muffled screams from somewhere in the depths — the owners, who, incongruously, have two young children, are clearly aware of their house’s inherent drama: In a niche along one of the subterranean corridors, Skalso added a metal shelving unit stacked with cans of baked beans and bottled water, a wink to contemporary survivalist clichés. It is an extreme way to live, but in the end Gotland, despite its reputation for placid beauty, is pretty extreme itself: remote and wind-whipped and fierce — with, finally, a corresponding architecture. There are more contemporary houses in the works on the island over the next decade, including a streamlined enclave of a dozen on the island’s northeast inlet anchored by the Fabriken Furillen inn. The Law of Jante, it turns out, especially its final tenet — “You shall not believe you can teach us anything” — is no longer true here, amid the quiet farmhouses, the monochrome of Falu red, the Biblical sky that never ends. Subversion, it seems, takes its most intriguing form when there is something beautiful and pure to bend. ‘‘You need the right background to change the way people think,’’ Enflo had said, staring out at the field from the wide-open house he designed. ‘‘It’s that contrast that makes you free.’’
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To follow the natural curve of the land and avoid blasting into dense rock, Tham, the architect, designed the concrete floors of his near-bare dwelling to rise and fall from room to room.
OF A KIND
Tony Oursler’s spiritual ephemera
Magical thinking is in the artist Tony Oursler’s DNA. His grandfather was a magician. His father, Fulton Oursler Jr., was the founder of Angels on Earth, a magazine dedicated to encounters with otherworldly beings. As such, Oursler was born to a deep-seated obsession with the occult and paranormal, amassing a collection — which includes photographs of U.F.O.s, 19th-century books on ghosts and specimens of ectoplasm (a product of spiritual activity, manifested in the form of cheesecloth-like material) — that’s grown to include over 3,000 objects. The 60-year-old, known for his outsize multimedia installations of monstrous, distorted faces and ghoulish video projections, has spent decades searching for mystic ephemera everywhere from estate sales to online auctions. ‘‘What’s fascinating to me are the things that seem to be missing from the world of documented history,’’ he says. ‘‘I’m always looking for what’s in the shadows.’’ Oursler’s new commission for the Public Art Fund, an outdoor video projection, will debut in New York this fall. — John Wogan Illustrations by Aurore de La Morinerie
‘‘Chronicles of Spirit Photography,’’ by Miss Houghton, 1882. ‘‘She also created wonderful spirit paintings that are only recently being appreciated.’’
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Images of living subjects from the 1800s with what appear to be ghosts (often the product of double exposure) from Miss Houghton’s ‘‘Chronicles of Spirit Photography.’’
An 1889 portrait of Alfred Russel Wallace, the little-known naturalist who helped develop Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection.
Photograph of a shrunken head. ‘‘When I was 8 years old, I was playing in the attic with my brothers and sisters. We toppled over a vitrine encasing a shrunken head. There was a bug infestation inside.’’
The second of five 1917 photographs in the then-famous ‘‘Cottingley Fairies’’ series taken of two young cousins in England, Elsie Wright and Frances Griffiths, purportedly playing with real woodland fairies. ‘‘This image was sent to my grandfather Fulton Oursler Sr. by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, a spiritualist and the creator of the Sherlock Holmes novels. My parents showed me these when I was probably 5 or 6 years old. ”
‘‘The Toadstool Among the Tombs’’ by B. H. Shadduck, an anti-evolution pamphlet, 1925.
Handwritten note by French ‘‘thought photographer’’ Louis Darget, 1896. ‘‘Here, Darget explains the phenomenon of thought photography: the process of holding photographic paper to one’s forehead and seeing what manifested. They’re really a precursor to the Rorschach test — and even psychoanalysis.’’