Home//Architectural Digest/May 2024/In This Issue
Architectural Digest|May 2024Star TreatmentsSHEER GENIUSROOM TO ROOM, HUNTER DOUGLAS’S PROVENANCE WOVEN WOOD SHADES FORM A DIAPHANOUS THROUGH LINE WHILE BALANCING NATURAL LIGHT AND PRIVACY (HUNTERDOUGLAS.COM).POWER GRIDHAND-PAINTED IN BENJAMIN MOORE’S MANCHESTER TAN, HARLEQUIN SQUARES LEND GRAPHIC CHARM TO THE KITCHEN’S WHITE-OAK FLOORS (BENJAMINMOORE.COM).SHADES OF BEIGETHE BEDROOM COMBINES THREE MORE BENJAMIN MOORE COLORS: MYSTIC GOLD FOR PANELING, BAR HARBOR BEIGE FOR WALLS AND CEILING, AND BEACH HOUSE BEIGE FOR DOORS.FOR MORE SMART IDEAS VISIT ARCHDIGEST.COM/AD-IT-YOURSELF…1 min
Architectural Digest|May 2024PARIS MATCHEast meets West at the new Hôtel Hana, a 26-room gem designed by AD100 star Laura Gonzalez with artistic director Olivier Leone, and set in Paris’s Little Tokyo district. Throughout the property (the latest addition to the Adresses group) Gonzalez deftly blends the quartier’s historic Belle Époque maximalism and contemporary Japanese minimalism, employing iroko wood and straw wall coverings in ornate settings. Chef Shirley Garrier’s menu carries on that dialogue in the cozy restaurant, while the cave-like spa features kobido treatments. hotelhana-paris.com…1 min
Architectural Digest|May 2024Saddle UpHermès has a long history of collaborating with artists and designers: In the pre–World War II years, the house used Sonia Delaunay fabrics and produced Jean-Michel Frank furniture, since reissued. More recently, Op Art legend Julio Le Parc produced a limited series of silk carrés.So when Benoit Pierre Emery, creative director of Hermès Tableware, wanted to introduce a new dinner service, he rang Virginie Jamin, a beloved French children’s illustrator who had already designed an ashtray and 30 scarves for the house.What they created together is Tressages Équestres, a 27-piece collection with 10 new hollowware shapes, all decorated with jaunty swirls of ropes, cords, and straps inspired by equestrian tack—the brand’s original métier. Jamin dived into the project three years ago by visiting the Hermès archives in Paris. When she…2 min
Architectural Digest|May 2024Grecian YearnFaced with staying a few nights in a city they often visit, most people check into a plush hotel. Tino Zervudachi, on the other hand, wanted a pied-àterre that reflected his own sensibility. “I have lots of work in Greece, enough to bring me here once a month, so Athens feels like home,” says the AD100 interior architect and decorator, who has a place on the Aegean island of Hydra (AD, April 2017) and jets between Paris, London, New York, and Los Angeles, where he has offices.After a year of searching, Zervudachi settled on a top-floor flat on a quiet street in the city’s shopaholic-ready Kolonaki district. (Yes, he can see the Acropolis.) “It ticked all the boxes: It was a ruin, nobody had done anything to it since the…4 min
Architectural Digest|May 2024THE DOOR’S OPENKnown for manufacturing top-quality window systems, Sky-Frame has built its name blurring boundaries between indoors and out with floor-to-ceiling expanses of glass. Now the Swiss brand—long the go-to source for AD100 architects on the order of Steven Harris and Bjarke Ingels—has further dissolved that divide. This March, Sky-Frame unveiled an automated update to its Pivot door, allowing users to open or close the portal at the tap of a smartphone or button. Laser sensors, meanwhile, detect any obstacle, stopping the partition in its tracks should an object or a pet fall behind. sky-frame.com…1 min
Architectural Digest|May 2024SPANISH LESSONSHer husband was adamant: The investment manager would accept any place for a vacation home other than Ibiza, the Spanish island known far and wide for its wild nightlife, hedonistic discotheques, and celebrity sightings. “We started with the Hamptons, then Greece, and then Mallorca, because he plays golf, and it has plenty of courses,” says his ebullient wife, Emma Roig Askari, a contributing editor at Vanity Fair Spain, a TV commentator for Atresmedia, and a Christie’s ambassador. Her secret weapon was simple: to take her recalcitrant husband to Ibiza offseason, “when the valleys are full of flowers and there’s beautiful sunlight. Little by little, he got interested.”Three years of diligent searching later, the London-based couple and their relieved grown children—“They were so happy that we’d finally decided on something”—found a…5 min
Architectural Digest|May 2024outside the boxIn 2005, Hurricane Stan rendered the main train station in Tapachula, Mexico, in the coastal state of Chiapas, unusable. For more than a decade, the government did nothing. Then, in 2018, Mexico elected a president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who was determined to revitalize impoverished neighborhoods with new construction, a job he entrusted to his Secretariat of Agrarian, Territorial, and Urban Development (SEDATU), led by a then 35-year-old powerhouse named Román Meyer Falcón.Not long after, a group of civic-minded architects joined the cause. When the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) announced a competition, organized at SEDATU’s behest, to design amenities like a new market for the city of Matamoros, UNAM academics Gabriela Carrillo, José Amozurrutia and Eric Valdez, along with Carlos Facio and Israel Espín, all teamed up. (Facio…4 min
Architectural Digest|May 2024editor’s letter“I haven’t been everywhere, but it’s on my list.”—Susan SontagArmchair travelers, rejoice: AD took a jaunt around the world for our May International issue, and the pictures are worth a thousand words. If you, too, are working on “everywhere,” consider this a little shortcut. The richly individual residences and projects shown this month are so powerfully evocative that you might feel you have journeyed to Ibiza, Costa Rica, Lagos, the French countryside, Mexico, and even Los Angeles just by turning the pages. Add the passionate language each homeowner uses to describe the singular lure of their chosen locale, and the picture is complete.Acclaimed artist Yinka Shonibare, who is based in London, returned to his hometown in Nigeria to build a spectacular artist’s residence that doubles as his own base when…2 min
Architectural Digest|May 2024Unpacked LoreThe legend of Louis Vuitton is often told in broad strokes. What is now an international luxury brand began as a trunk atelier, founded by its namesake Parisian in 1854. His son, Georges, later took the reins, followed by his son, Gaston-Louis—each generation making its own innovations. “The story has been told many times,” reflects architect Shohei Shigematsu, a New York–based partner of OMA. Epic tales, of course, bear repeating. So when the brand tapped him to conceive an exhibition, he immersed himself in the archives, challenging himself to dig into the details and revisit the narrative with fresh eyes.His vision comes to life at the new LV The Place Bangkok, a first-of-its-kind flagship for the brand, with a café, restaurant, and galleries. Titled “Visionary Journeys,” the exhibition immediately turns…2 min
Architectural Digest|May 2024Seasonal ShiftsBulgari’s new Serpenti watches by Tadao Ando may catch some by surprise. Though the Roman jewelry house and the Japanese Pritzker Prize winner have teamed up before, their latest project marks the first time the brand has invited someone to update the Serpenti: a high-glamour icon beloved by the likes of Elizabeth Taylor. But if Ando’s hallmark minimalism and the timepiece’s cult luxury status sound like strange bedfellows, there’s magic in the unexpected.Bulgari and Ando first collaborated in 2019 with his reimaginings of the Octo Finissimo, a series that fits complex watchmaking into a shockingly thin case, pushing the technical limits of the craft. The architect’s two limited-edition models, made of titanium and ceramic, married his propensity for simple geometries and his rigorous focus on materiality. A third version followed…2 min
Architectural Digest|May 2024Edge of His SeatFragile though the state of the world may be, Matthieu Blazy, the creative director of Bottega Veneta, is finding comfort in the concept of rebirth. “These are the flowers that bloom after the earth is burnt—they give a sense of hope,” he wrote in the notes for the brand’s winter 2024 show. “They come back stronger than ever. Here, elegance is resilience.” It’s a theme he hammered home on the runway, from the clothes (think scorched colors and singed motifs) to the sets, which featured adaptations of Le Corbusier’s iconic LC14 Tabouret Cabanon seat. The latest in Bottega Veneta’s recurring collaborations with Cassina, each box featured a bespoke charred finish, as if history were reemerging from the ashes.Blazy first encountered the LC14, Le Corbusier’s clever 1952 twist on a simple…2 min
Architectural Digest|May 2024Fine FootworkWhen AD100 maestro Pierre Yovanovitch and footwear wizard Christian Louboutin met through their mutual friend—the landscape guru and AD100 Hall of Famer Louis Benech—15 years ago, they sensed they would one day work together on interiors projects. The duo’s first, in 2015, was Louboutin’s jewel box beauty boutique in the Galerie Véro-Dodat, the 19th-century covered passage in Paris where his original shop is also located. “We had great fun with that little project,” Yovanovitch says of their inaugural collaboration, a surrealistic space resembling the interior of a nail polish bottle. (It closed in 2018 after Puig licensed Louboutin’s beauty line.)Now comes their second act: a collection of 10 chairs adapted from Yovanovitch’s signature hits with little naïf shoes. “One morning, the idea came to me to go farther and give…2 min
Architectural Digest|May 2024ARTISTIC FREEDOMIn 2014, the celebrated British Nigerian multidisciplinary artist Yinka Shonibare returned to his hometown of Lagos for the first time in more than two decades. He hosted a symposium that proved both game-changing for those in attendance and life-altering for him. “The talk was packed with young artists, and I realized that there was a need here; young artists needed to be mentored,” he says.He flirted with the idea of erecting a museum of contemporary art, but ultimately decided that a “grassroots” approach would be more impactful on the local creative ecosystem. In 2019, he founded Guest Artists Space (GAS) Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to research, facilitating international cultural exchange, and—with the opening of its two locations in 2022—fostering the next generation of creatives through 4-to-12-week residencies.While ambitious in scale,…5 min
Architectural Digest|May 2024HISTORIC PROPORTIONSNot far from the Fontainebleau forest, in the Seine-et-Marne department of France, lies a country property so charming and picturesque yet sophisticated, it seems like something dreamed up by a Hollywood set designer. Composed of several buildings around a courtyard with two huge, historic linden trees growing in the middle, the property is home to sheep, chickens, dogs, cats, horses, and two miniature donkeys—there are even beehives. Welcome to the residence and atelier of French designer Eric Schmitt and his lifelong partner, Alexandra Babeanu, who goes by Sandra.Though probably best known for his sleek furniture designs (represented by Ralph Pucci International, Carpenters Workshop Gallery, and others), Schmitt is always creating and exploring. Self-taught, he continues in a long tradition of French decorative artists working in everything from bronze to glass,…6 min
Architectural Digest|May 2024Space-Time ContinuumBeginning in the 1940s, Italian architect Gio Ponti created a series of refreshingly modern riffs on the wingback chair. In one, a sinuous carved wood frame was topped with fat cushions. In another variety—this one fully upholstered—the “wings” seemed to be folded from its sides like origami. So in 1963, when Italian heritage brand Bonacina 1889 asked Ponti to design a chair in their hallmark bamboo and rattan, the maestro thrilled at the chance to revisit the form in yet another medium. The resulting steam-bent wicker BP16 armchair—later renamed the Continuum—gave the illusion that it was constructed from one continuous reed.“It highlights the characteristic of the material that allows soft folds without interruptions, joints, or welding,” explains Salvatore Licitra, Ponti’s grandson and the founder of Gio Ponti Archives. “He kept…2 min
Architectural Digest|May 2024Slow and Steady“How do you cut through the noise?” That was the question Nicholas Obeid posed to himself when conceiving his first independent furniture collection. Overwhelmed by today’s vast furniture market and mile-a-minute trend cycles, the New York City–based interior designer set out to create an array both concise and considered—with clean lines, simple forms, and meaningful materials. Inspirations ranged from Italian creative polyglot Enzo Mari to French architect Georges Djo-Bourgeois to German American abstract painter Josef Albers. But Obeid’s love of geometry acts as the philosophical prism, evident in the square profile of the Milo sofa’s bolster pillows and the sinuous silhouette of the Nadia bench, its converging curves realized in both solid and veneered walnut. (Like the Ines bed, it nods to the French antiques of his great-aunt’s Buenos Aires…1 min
Architectural Digest|May 2024Home at LastIt’s hard to keep pace with design polymath Jermaine Gallacher. One moment, he’s holding court at a snug table in Bistro Freddie, a hip Shoreditch restaurant he decorated. The next, he’s cracking open a beer at the South Bermondsey studio of metalworker Barnaby Lewis before zipping over to visit glassblower Miranda Keyes at her nearby live-work space. All the while, he talks fast, enthusiastically hopscotching among subjects, from Charles and Maggie Jencks’s postmodern mansion, the Cosmic House (“it’s high art, academic, and unashamedly fun all at once”), to raves—like the party he threw at Barts the Great church in November to launch the second issue of Ton, an irreverent new magazine he started with two friends.But a recent project, arguably his most ambitious yet, has forced him to slow down.…3 min
Architectural Digest|May 2024Taking the Scenic RouteGrowing up in Burlington, Vermont, Xavier Donnelly was surrounded by scenery as his mother, a painter, worked on theatrical and cinematic backdrops. “There was always a big mural project going on,” reflects the designer and creative director of the New York–based firm Ash. Decades later, a similar sight has unfolded in Donnelly’s own West Village apartment, where canvases stretched across the floor have evolved into romantic landscapes and celestial vistas. They’re all part of Donnelly’s dreamy new wallpaper collection for Backdrop, a brand best known for its tightly edited palette of paint colors. “It really does feel like Xavier may have popped into your room with his own brush,” Backdrop cofounder Natalie Ebel says of the line, the company’s first wall coverings collaboration. Two of the four patterns come as…1 min
Architectural Digest|May 2024Closer QuartersSix years ago, when designers Nick Ozemba and Felicia Hung launched their hit lighting studio In Common With, the duo dreamed about their future New York City showroom. “Maybe it would just be a bar, more of a hospitality space where we can actually engage with people,” Ozemba recalls thinking. Fast-forward to May 13: The company is opening Quarters, a rambling two-level flagship in Tribeca that’s part store and part hangout, with a full kitchen, dining room, bedroom, and much more. Here, in a sophisticated yet casual context, friends and clients can encounter the brand’s versatile hand-finished designs alongside a revolving cast of vintage finds and new collaborations—among them partnerships with Sophie Lou Jacobsen, Danny Kaplan, and Shane Gabier, who created tile for backsplashes and bathrooms. All told, Ozemba and…1 min
Architectural Digest|May 2024welcome to the jungleRainy season in Nosara, Costa Rica, stretches for seven months. The climate, with its inexorable humidity and salt air, wreaks havoc on building materials and quotidian staples like rugs and books. Termites and ants are constantly on the march, and the power grid occasionally goes down. Reshma Patel and her husband, Christian Rudder, a cofounder of the online dating site OkCupid, know all about the struggle. In 2020, the couple decamped from New York City to Costa Rica with their daughter, Plum, for what was initially meant to be a one-year sojourn. But the Edenic landscape proved irresistible, and the family decided to put down roots. “We wanted to learn how to live in harmony with nature, so we decided that we were going to be okay with the ants…5 min
Architectural Digest|May 2024WaterworldLucky guests at Le Sirenuse invariably talk of the view. Perched on Italy’s fabled Amalfi Coast, the hotel enjoys sweeping vistas of cliffside Positano and the Tyrrhenian Sea, its azure depths dotted by boats. And it was precisely this panorama that inspired artist Nicolas Party when, tapped to reimagine the property’s pool, he spent a blissful week on-site soaking up the dolce vita atmosphere. To channel the landscape while taking care not to compete with it, the Swiss-born star composed a vibrant tableau of overlapping abstract forms reminiscent of earth, water, and sky, albeit with no discernible horizon line. “Are they mountains? Are they clouds? Or are they like waves or smoke?” says Party, musing on the finished result, which was translated from his pastel sketch and meticulous digital template…1 min
