FRONTISPIECE

Clockwise from main picture: the cherry-coloured Bolotas sofa, by the Brazilian Campana brothers, is covered in luxurious sheepskin; Pierre Yovanovitch’s Mama Bear chair is a wonderfully chic cuddly toy; Max Lamb is creating a stir with his multicoloured Tufted Pillow chair; and the Cabana Yeti chair, by Timothy Oulton, is made from New Zealand sheepskin and weathered oak

FURRY FRIENDS

Perhaps fuelled by a renewed yearning for comfort and cosiness at home, or a desire to pay homage to design icons, upscale furniture stores and sitting rooms across the world are luxuriating in an array of lavishly woolly, occasionally furry and even downright shaggy sofas and armchairs. Some of the design world’s leading lights are opting for curves and fabulously indulgent upholstery instead of sharp, streamlined lines and minimalist styling. And there is a witty elegance at play here. Pierre Yovanovitch’s Mama Bear chair nods to Jean Royère’s 1940s classic the Polar Bear sofa (originals now sell at auction for up to £500,000), but Yovanovitch pushes things one step further by turning his chair into an actual cuddly toy, albeit a wonderfully chic one. Brazilian design legends the Campana brothers opt for a more glamorous route with their spectacular cherry-coloured Bolotas sofa, covered in luxurious sheepskin: a showstopper if ever there was one. And fêted British designer Max Lamb is creating a stir with his multicoloured Tufted Pillow chairs. Who said you had to choose between style and comfort?

FRONTISPIECE

TRENDS, INSIGHTS AND UPDATES FROM THE WORLDS OF PROPERTY, DESIGN AND LUXURY LIFESTYLE

HERITAGE LANDMARK LIVING

“Rare is the opportunity to live in a landmark building and become part of its next chapter,” says Annabelle Dudley, director with Savills Global Residential Development Sales. “This is one of the key reasons they attract buyers from around the globe.” Also part of the appeal is the new life these projects breathe into neighbourhoods. This is certainly true of the £1bn development of Whiteleys shopping centre in Bayswater, London. Famed for its colonnaded facade and rooftop cupolas, the store is being transformed into 139 apartments and townhouses, 20 shops and restaurants, a cinema, a gym and Britain’s first Six Senses hotel and spa.

Across town on Whitehall, the Old War Office Building, where Ian Fleming conceived James Bond, will become The OWO, London’s first Raffles hotel, with nine restaurants and bars, a spa and 85 branded residences, some centred on the historic offices of Winston Churchill and David Lloyd George. “International buyers, especially, love this quintessentially English architecture,” says Edward Lewis, head of London Residential Development Sales at Savills.

Adam Simmonds, director of Savills Super Prime Sales, believes the building’s character is invariably the main attraction: “You don’t want a pied-à-terre that could be replicated anywhere in the world. The high ceilings, cornices and 100-year-old marble fireplaces are really a selling point.”

Historic developments overseas seem to hold the same appeal. At the Manifattura Tabacchi in Florence, a tobacco factory is being reimagined to include ateliers, workshops, office and co-working facilities, and cultural and education spaces, alongside lofts and apartments, student housing and a hotel. In Berlin, Swiss starchitects Herzog & de Meuron have designed the masterplan for a dynamic urban quarter of residential buildings, restaurants, shops and offices, centred around the historic Kunsthaus Tacheles (Art House). “These projects offer modern, ergonomic homes within iconic architectural designs,” says Dudley. “But, equally, their amenities – open-air theatres, universities, markets, ateliers, art galleries – make them desirable communities to live in.”

From top: for residents of The OWO, an impressive reworking of the Old War Office Building in Whitehall, history will be all around; at the Manifattura Tabacchi in Florence, a tobacco factory is being transformed into a cultural and residential destination; and the £1bn redevelopment of Whiteleys shopping centre will breathe new life into Bayswater

Above: Pierre Frey, whose wallpaper can be seen in this picture, is one of the participants in the inaugural WOW!house show this summer

WELLNESS HEALTHY HOMES

“We spend 90 per cent of our time indoors,” says Paul Scialla, CEO of Delos, a young business merging the world’s largest asset class – real estate – with one of its fastest-growing industries, wellness. “Yet from a health perspective those environments have long been overlooked.” Delos has spent five years working with medical professionals, architects and designers to create DARWIN Home Wellness Intelligence, an automated network designed to monitor, calibrate and respond to changing environmental conditions in your home. It comprises air purification, custom water filtration, circadian lighting and enhanced sleep systems – four key tools to improve “the health of your home”.

Scialla is evidently far from alone in this thinking. Edward Lewis, head of Residential Development Sales at Savills, sees this as a shift developers are getting wise to. “How to provide a really good wellness offer – that’s the new thing, whether it’s a spa with a nutritionist or even a medical concierge.”

Interior designer and architectural historian Edward Bulmer is also fighting the good fight, having developed plant-based paints that are eco-friendly and free of harmful chemicals. According to Bulmer, petrochemical products are prime suspects in the rise of unexplained allergies, ME, asthma, eczema and other ailments. He says: “The question really should be, ‘Why are you happy to use plastic paint?’”

The use of plant-based paints is an extension of biophilic design, which aims to enhance health and wellbeing by improving our connection to nature. The Davidson Prize-winning HomeForest app, for example, pairs with a selection of smart devices to overlay sensory experiences such as the sound of birdsong and the smell of rain.

INTERIORS CHANGING ROOMS

Over the past two decades the Design Centre at Chelsea Harbour (DCCH) has developed into a domed temple to interior design. Its 120 showrooms, featuring more than 600 brands, offer inspiration and ideas from some of the world’s most famous furniture, fabric, lighting and wallpaper designers. Annual shows such as Artefact, featuring contemporary crafts, and London Design Week showcase the makers and trends to watch.

Now DCCH is going a step further with WOW!house, running for the whole of June – leading designers have been paired with some of the world’s most famous interiors brands to create more than 20 interior and exterior spaces, housed in a special “longhouse”. It’s a formula that has proved successful in the US, where the Kips Bay Decorator Show House events in New York, Palm Beach and Dallas pull in the design-savvy crowd, but Claire German, CEO of DCCH, believes the London version will be bigger and better. Designers include Rita Konig, Emma Burns and Philip Hooper of Sibyl Colefax & John Fowler, Paolo Moschino and Philip Vergleyen, and Raymond Boozer of Apartment 48, while participating brands include Pierre Frey, Schumacher and Sanderson Design Group. Prepare to be wowed.

PROPERTY MARKET CITIES ARE ON THE UP

As Covid worked its way across the world for two long years, there were mumblings that city living could go into terminal decline. Fearing crowds and able to work remotely, many metropolitan stalwarts decamped to small towns and villages – and declared them perfect. But as the pandemic subsided, back many of them came, and now prime residential cities are rising reinvigorated out of the doldrums. The latest World Cities Prime Residential Index from Savills forecasts average growth of 4.3% – the second highest figure in five years. The index shows that cities, endlessly renewable, are racing ahead once again as a key residential choice.

“There are a number of trends in cities, but the overarching theme is the effect of the pandemic,” says Paul Tostevin, director of World Research at Savills. “In the UK, we saw the rediscovery of the suburbs and the countryside. But people didn’t lose sight of cities – and those urban centres that are rising fastest offer lower costs and lifestyle advantages such as outside space.” Add historically low interest rates, rising incomes and mortgage affordability, and the city once more holds its own as the lifestyle choice for all generations.

Further afield, the highest-flying cities in the Savills index include San Francisco, Los Angeles and Miami in the US; Berlin and Lisbon in Europe; Dubai in the Middle East; Sydney in Australia; and Singapore. The extraordinary level of growth in many Chinese cities, however, has slowed sharply, with prices falling because of liquidity problems among major developers. Some of the high flyers are new entries, others old salts, but all offer energy as well as cultural and financial clout. Take the legacy metropolises of London, Paris and New York, which, although slightly lower down on the growth list, are still extremely attractive. “Paris has had a real bounce back in the past couple of years,” says Tostevin. “It suffered during Covid because so many French people have second homes, but is rising again – and when you’re able to work remotely and split your time between locations, the city experience becomes even more appealing.” Big cities also offer face-to-face business, which remains important, and some of the soaraway cities, including Miami, Dubai and Lisbon, benefit from the trend to flexible and remote working as well as the desire for space and outdoor life.

Cities have always had a geographic raison d’être – whether river, port or central position. London’s historic success, for example, lies in its being a confluence of trade and time zone. Now, that doesn’t quite matter so much. “Cities are reimagining themselves, with governmental activity to make them sustainable, liveable and healthy,” says Tostevin. These greener conurbations aim to reinvent urban life, reducing traffic and stress while offering great transport and infrastructure. It’s the next stage of development, says Tostevin: “Cities are no longer just bases for manufacturing, but for services and technology, too.”

In the long-term – Covid aside – cities remain on an upward trend. Just 3 per cent of the global population lived in cities in 1800, but by 2014 more than half of the world’s population was urban – a figure expected to increase to two-thirds by 2050. Why? Because cities contain aspiration. From Giza in ancient Egypt to Athens and Rome, New York and Beijing, cities are where the action is. As the urbanist Richard Florida says: “No pandemic – not the plagues, not London’s cholera epidemic, not the devastating Spanish flu of the early 20th century – has killed off our great cities or quelled the force of urbanisation.” Savills World Cities Index is where the story of the next urban century is being written.

MICHAEL DRIVER BY ILLUSTRATION

GARDENS MEET THE GARDEN SALVAGE HUNTERS

Some might say our gardens reveal as much about us as our home interiors. And one way to express your personality while giving your plot a cultured, lived-in aesthetic is through garden antiques such as birdbaths, statues, sundials and millstones. Finding the best examples often requires a little expertise – and a few friends with weathering country piles. Fortunately, there are a few specialists who can claim both.

“What you have in your garden is representative of you as a person,” says Tina Bird, owner of Kent-based Decorative Garden Antiques. Bird specialises in 18th-century animal statuary by Eleanor Coade, Austin & Seeley and the Bromsgrove Guild. They might be life-size lions or posturing pigs, but they must have nice faces. “When I walk into my garden, I want to feel good,” Bird says. “I wouldn’t enjoy standing next to an eagle that looks like it’s going to kill me.”

In Hungerford, West Berkshire, Travers Nettleton and his wife, Katie, own Garden Art Plus. Thanks to a little black book that is not short on landed gentry, they have become experts at sourcing beautiful antique water features, fountains, wellheads and troughs – architectural pieces that “soften the landscape while providing an interesting focal point”. Their speciality, however, is provenance. “We’re always incredibly careful about knowing where everything comes from,” says Nettleton, who recently acquired a wonderful George III lead cistern from the estate of Stanley Baldwin. “That said, it’s often fairly routine, as we’ll buy direct from properties that have been in the family for years.”

When looking for a truly remarkable feature, many leading landscape gardeners – including Tom Stuart-Smith, Jinny Blom, Cleve West and Arne Maynard – have sought the help of Darren Jones, owner of Lichen Garden Antiques. For years he has supplied oculi, finials and gates to best-in-show gardens at the Chelsea Flower Show, which takes place every May. Jones has carved out an ecclesiastical niche, buying and selling cupolas from Westminster Abbey, gargoyles from Gloucester Cathedral and even tombstones. “Those gargoyles have pellet marks from when Cromwell’s troops shot at them during the invasion of Gloucester,” he says. “They were snapped up by a collector. Everything seems to go quickly these days – people are spending so much more time in their garden. Some of these pieces are worth two or three times what they were five years ago.”

TECHNOLOGY THE VIRTUAL LAND GRAB

The metaverse is becoming gentrified. Investors, celebrities, brands and organisations are paying fortunes for non-fungible-token (NFT) real estate in what is being described as a virtual land grab. That’s right, your online persona, or avatar, is going to need somewhere to live too. And it might end up costing more than your IRL home.

“The metaverse is made up of platforms or worlds [Decentraland, The Sandbox, OpenSea and Cryptovoxels are the most popular] that allow users to buy virtual parcels of land they can build on and monetise,” says crypto expert James Harris, principal at Savills associate The Agency in Los Angeles. “Parcels are bought as NFTs, making them unique, tradeable digital assets, the ownership of which is recorded on a blockchain.” A plot of land in Decentraland’s trendy Fashion District recently sold for a record $2.4m and three parcels next to Snoop Dogg’s Sandbox mansion, a digital recreation of his home in California, went for a combined $1.23m. The buyers hope to rent out the space for commercial events. Adidas, Nike and Samsung have bought plots for exclusive branded content and Barbados is set to become the first country to open a virtual embassy.

So, should we all be virtual-househunting? It is hard to say. Some estimate the metaverse will be worth $800bn by 2024, others believe it is a case of the emperor’s new clothes.