Innholdsfortegnelse for July/August 2020 i Architectural Digest

Six years ago, after independently moving to Los Angeles from Uruguay, industrial designer Emiliana Gonzalez and artist Jessie Young struck up a friendship. “We were both here, both immigrants, and both desperate to do something new,” recalls Young. So when Gonzalez landed an interior design gig, she invited Young to help. Working under the moniker Estudio Persona—it means the study of a person, they explain, and nods to their favorite Ingmar Bergman film—they quickly realized that designing custom furniture was their favorite part of the job. By 2017, they launched a collection of pieces Gonzalez describes as “clean and non-accessorized, almost like cutouts.” Whereas their Nido series pairs swooping seats with wood bases, their Block chair riffs on the chunky sculpture of Carl Andre. “We played around with modular blocks…

Inspired by the stately architecture of Colonial America, the Williamsburg® Paint Color Collection by Benjamin Moore features 144 timeless paint colors, from classic neutrals to vivid hues like patriotic Finley Blue CW-620 (shown). The historically accurate palette, available in a range of finishes, looks as fresh today as it did centuries ago. The collection offers a distinctive backdrop to contemporary furnishings and treasured antiques alike. Some colors never go out of style. For more information, go to BenjaminMoore.com.…

From the garden level to the top floor, the family enjoys the whole house. Anna Flett was pregnant with her first son when she and her husband, Brandon Haley, took on the renovation of their dream town house in Manhattan’s West Village. And like all first-time parents, they imagined life would continue apace with their bundle of joy. “We designed that house thinking the baby would simply join our sophisticated-adult lives,” says Flett. After they lived there for about three-and-a-half years—along with their second son and a daughter on the way—it became clear that silk velvet sofas, sumptuous rugs, layers and layers of furnishings, and, most pointedly, a ground-floor kitchen were designed for, well, sophisticated adults. “It was such a beautiful house—every room—but we spent all of our time in…

“I wanted to make sure I captured that salty air,” says AD100 designer Victoria Hagan about her work on a classic shingled house built in the 1700s by a prominent local family on Martha’s Vineyard. Not long ago, it was acquired by a New York–based couple who are longtime clients of Hagan’s. They fell in love with the place for its simplicity as well as for its spectacular beachfront location in Edgartown. Hagan was equally enamored as soon as she saw it. “We were all so excited,” she recalls. “So I thought, I have to handle this very carefully. It’s so special. They loved the oldness of it, and there’s a quirkiness to it. It’s this little old house with many fireplaces—a cottage from another time.” That said, it had to…

British photographer and set designer Cecil Beaton prided himself on being au courant, but when it came to his country place, Reddish House in Wiltshire, he was as Edwardian as anyone born in 1904 could be. So was the romantic, bamboo-paneled winter garden, created with decorator Felix Harbord, that Beaton added in 1955. “English Baroque proportions, a stone floor in 18th-century French style, Gothic windows that are very Strawberry Hill, and a central fountain that follows the Islamic concept of paradise,” Alexander Hoyle, cult London plantsman, observes of the winter garden, which was featured in AD’s fall 1969 issue. “The combination of elements firmly sets it in an Edwardian Revival idiom.” Given the roughly 20-foot-square footprint, “there was precious little space for growing plants,” he notes of the room, furnished…

According to Mario Bellini, most of the sofas that were being designed in the early 1970s fell firmly into two categories. “There were variants on historical typologies or radical, provocational, elitist forays into the future,” says the Italian architect, now 85 and still designing. Neither earnest throwbacks nor sci-fi follies, he thought at the time, responded appropriately to the world’s rapidly evolving living habits. So he filled the void, designing the 1970 Camaleonda seating system—now poised to make a comeback thanks to B&B Italia. Explaining his choice of name, Bellini recalls, “I crossed two words: camaleonte, or chameleon, an extraordinary animal capable of adapting to its environment, and onda, or wave.” Created for B&B Italia, the system certainly lived up to both. Bulbous modules of fabric-covered polyurethane hooked together using…

At the heart of this tale about a serene, sophisticated family getaway in Santa Cruz, California, there’s a tree. Actually, a kind of tree—the Monterey cypress, a species native to the state’s central and northern coast. First, and most obviously, there’s the lovely specimen that presides over the home’s clifftop site, hovering above a stretch of world-class surf breaks and scenic beaches. And then there are the various cypresses that were marshaled into service by Feldman Architecture and AD100 firm Commune Design to construct the exterior and interior of the house. The story of how that wood was handled—from the way it was harvested to the myriad details of its fabrication—speaks to a profound reverence, shared by the homeowners and designers alike, for the rare beauty of the California landscape…

Midway through the installation of Sarah Sze’s site-specific artwork at LaGuardia Airport, the clock stopped. On March 22, under executive order by Governor Andrew Cuomo, New York State officially went on pause as part of emergency measures to combat the coronavirus pandemic. But Terminal B, the centerpiece of a comprehensive overhaul to LaGuardia by the governor and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, depended on the sculpture’s completion to open. So Sze and her team—all deemed essential workers—labored on, working through early May to finish the artwork, itself a standstill representation of hours gone by. “An airport is a portal into the displacement of time and space,” reflects Sze, one of four artists commissioned by LaGuardia Gateway Partners and Public Art Fund to create works for Terminal…

Nobody rocks a tie-dyed ensemble and rainbowcolored leopard-print hair quite like Latin music superstar J Balvin, a.k.a. Jose Alvaro Osorio Balvin. The recordbreaking Colombian singer sported the natty look at the 2019 iteration of Coachella, delighting legions of fans obsessed with his addictive reggaeton beats as well as his intrepid fashion sense, which runs the gamut from polychromatic streetwear to haute couture. Those same fans might be surprised to discover that on the home front, Balvin eschews giddy theatrics and prismatic finery in favor of minimalist cool and Japanese-inflected decorative restraint. His loft in Medellín and his country retreat in Llanogrande, 30 minutes from the city, are object lessons in the poetics of simplicity. “Architecture, music, fashion—they’re all forms of expression. When it comes to the places I live, I…

Sir David Adjaye Accra, Ghana “The pandemic happened to coincide with the one-year anniversary of my return home to Accra. In many ways, being here in the midst of this global crisis has furthered my process of rediscovery into Ghana’s past and its narratives—both biographical and national—that have inspired my work on the continent and abroad. I chose to take this photograph in Black Star Square because it is not just a symbol or historical ode to the past but a beacon that will speak to a vibrant future as Accra’s infrastructure and cultural fabric continue to evolve.” Emily Ward Los Angeles “My family and I have embraced the chaos of what has become our makeshift playroom, off the kitchen. This pandemic has reminded me that there is nothing more…

Mexico has always held a great allure for me. The beauty and diversity of the terrain, the many wonderful people I’ve gotten to know, not to mention the delicious food and obligatory margaritas. I’ve been lucky to work on several homes around this magical country over the years. None, however, has been as inspiring a task as my latest, Casa El Faro, a modernist aerie perched high on a rocky point on the Baja peninsula overlooking the Sea of Cortez. My client, an internationally renowned entrepreneur and philanthropist, didn’t just want to build a contemporary beach house for himself and his family. He wanted to capture the soul of this extraordinary site and build something that would do honor to both the past and future of Mexican art and design.…

“Green, gray, white, and cream marbles set the palette for the whole house,” notes Bullard. “I tapped many local artisans to help realize my vision for this family retreat.”…