Innholdsfortegnelse for March 2024 i Architectural Digest

“Essentially, I got to direct the movie I had in my head of how we wanted to live in Madrid, and I wanted each room to be an immersive experience.”—Michael S. Smith AD was founded in Los Angeles more than 100 years ago, and the city and its fascinating denizens and architecture continue to exert a magnetic influence on the design world. As the entertainment industry roars back to life, it feels particularly celebratory to visit a delightful cast of characters in their own environments in this issue. Not all the homes are in the Golden State, but all the players are deeply rooted there and have paid their dues. Referring to her glamorous Los Angeles hideout, cover star Sofía Vergara endearingly tells AD, “I still wake up every day…

In the depths of winter, Stockholm receives only about five and a half hours of sunlight a day. Which is why Liza Laserow Berglund and Fabian Berglund—cofounders of the Swedish textile company Nordic Knots—wanted their apartment “to feel like a hug,” Liza says. “It’s quite dark and cold here,” adds Fabian. “You don’t want to leave the house. Sundays can look like The Walking Dead. The city’s just empty.” Sophisticated and understated, the home offers a cozy gathering space not just for the couple and their three-year-old son, Ben, but for the friends and extended family they love to entertain in those dark winter months. Scandinavian antiques mix with midcentury abstract art and vintage icons by Charlotte Perriand and Pierre Jeanneret, as well as, naturally, Nordic Knots textiles. In the…

“It was magnificent,” says Alyssa Kapito of the moment, years ago, when she first laid eyes on a glasswork by Carlo Scarpa. The New York–based interior designer has been obsessed ever since, keeping an eye out for any vitreous vessels that the Italian maestro made with Venini in the 20th century. So when Marcantonio Brandolini d’Adda of the Murano studio Laguna B floated the idea for a collaboration, she proposed Scarpa’s beloved bollicine technique, wherein tiny bubbles appear to sparkle within the chunky glass. After some trial and error, they got it just so, arriving at four forms in green, beige, and gray. They’re the first in a series of limited-edition wares that she’ll exhibit alongside collectible vintage pieces at her forthcoming Manhattan gallery. Kapito, who will publish her first…

Who wants to live in a strictly midcentury house? After purchasing one of the most renowned ones in America, I soon realized that I did not. Built by Richard Neutra in 1955, the Brown House is a tour de force of glass, wood, and concrete, instantly recognizable for its huge living room with floor-to-ceiling sliding glass doors. The view—sweeping across the sapphire Pacific Ocean to silver jetliners landing at LAX—is take-your-breath-away dazzling. Fashion designer Tom Ford, a friend, had bought this crumbling masterpiece in 1997 and, working with architect Ron Radziner of Marmol Radziner and designer Brad Dunning, turned it into a new kind of classic. Everything was dark wood, with furniture covered in mohair and ponyskin. Ford was so enamored of this reborn house that he supposedly modeled all…

To borrow a phrase from Winston Churchill, Frank Gehry and LVMH chairman and CEO Bernard Arnault enjoy a special relationship. “He knows how to work with me,” says the Pritzker Prize–winning architect and AD100 Hall of Famer. “We share a passion for classical music, he understands the creative mind, and he’s open to experimentation,” Gehry continues, summarizing a partnership that began more than two decades ago and has included the monumental Fondation Louis Vuitton art center in Paris’s Bois de Boulogne (AD, October 2014) as well as the brand’s Seoul flagship (AD, February 2020). At Art Basel Miami Beach last December, Louis Vuitton celebrated the fruits of that fertile collaboration with an exhibition that featured wonders at all scales—from perfume bottles and trunks to preparatory sketches and architectural models. The…

Sofía Vergara doesn’t mince words about the condition of her palatial Beverly Park manse when she acquired the property. “There were arches on top of arches, all with columns. It felt like a castle in Transylvania,” recalls the effervescent actor-producer, currently playing against type as Colombian cocaine queenpin Griselda Blanco in the Netflix series Griselda. “But the layout was perfect, and I loved that you could see the landscape from every room, even though there wasn’t much of a garden to look at yet. I knew what I would do to make it my own,” she insists. There were, predictably, a few challenges. Despite the voluminous rooms and high ceilings, Vergara wanted the house to feel “homey and comfortable, a place where people would want to hang out and relax,”…

“I wanted each room to be an immersive experience.”—Michael S. Smith “I love the dialogue between drama and simplicity.”…

“While most remodels want to make the old new, our goal was very much the opposite.”—Johnny Galecki “There was not a part of the house that wasn’t touched in the renovation.”—Louisa Pierce…

When the Austrian designer Martin Eisler fled Nazi-occupied Vienna for Buenos Aires in 1938, Latin America was transforming. Immigration, an economic boom, and industrialization would give rise to a new global elite. And they needed furniture. So Eisler teamed with Carlo Hauner, an Italian furniture manufacturer living in Brazil, to establish Forma, a brand that could meet the demand. In just a few years’ time, they created a range of wares that, R & Company’s Zesty Meyers explains, “basically helped complete the industrialization of São Paulo.” A stellar example? The 1952 Costela, or Rib chair, in which a wrought-iron metal base clad in steam-bent wood “ribs” (originally local Brazilian walnut) cradled its sitter in a relaxed repose. “It captures the dialogue between immigrants and the territory at this moment of…

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It’s early December and designer Rich Aybar is holding court in a North Miami motel room, not far from the glamorous bustle of Art Basel Miami Beach. As an exhibitor at Alcova, the independent Milan design fair making its Stateside debut, he has lined the floor and walls with wornout black moving blankets: the perfect industrial-goth backdrop for his distinctive amber-hued vessels and furniture. “They’re rubber,” he explains to a curious visitor. “A window into prehistory.” For Aybar, the material is teeming with narrative. “It has a lot of colonial significance,” he explains of the tree-sap-based substance, which has provoked brutal conquest and labor exploitation for centuries. (He uses a synthetic, petroleum-derived version.) “That’s maybe what causes the cognitive dissonance,” he muses, wondering aloud, “Why doesn’t the design world engage…

Since launching his own firm in 2021, interior designer Matt McKay has delighted in creating one-of-a-kind pieces. “Whatever the project, I’m always keen to create custom furniture,” reflects the AD New American Voice, so anointed for his nuanced way with color, texture, and detail. An idea unshared, however, is an idea underutilized. With that in mind, McKay has mined his past portfolio to launch his first furniture collection, which comprises thoughtful tweaks to six bespoke pieces. The neoprene-and-leather seat that he devised for his own New York City apartment, for instance, has been reimagined in shearling and suede, while the asymmetrical club chair that he made for a client’s Manhattan penthouse has been rescaled. “You can throw your legs over the side and read a book,” he notes of the…

I've peaked,” Maude Apatow deadpans, before letting off a friendly laugh. “Like, now what?” It’s late December, and the 26-year-old screen star, best known as Lexi Howard on the hit HBO show Euphoria, is finishing up a big year. “If a younger version of me saw this, she would be freaking out. It’s been my dream since I was like, five.” By “this,” Apatow means her current reality: living in New York, acting in a musical (earlier in the year she starred as Audrey in an off-Broadway production of Little Shop of Horrors), and going home to her very own West Village apartment. “New York City can be really hectic,” she says. “I needed a place to decompress after being out all day. Coming back and feeling relaxed in my…

To describe the Hamptons estate that he transformed for Neil Patrick Harris and David Burtka, Edmund Hollander begins with a question: “How do you design a landscape for laughter and joy?” Pleasure was definitely the mandate for the 10-plus acres, tucked amid a swath of Long Island woodland. The star couple, both consummate entertainers, envisioned a place for friends and family to dine, lounge, and run free. “Fun pervaded the process,” Hollander says of the project, a highlight from his lush new monograph, The Landscape of Home (Rizzoli, March 2024). Here, his axial plan heightens a sense of discovery, with linear bluestone pathways that usher guests to the many outdoor rooms, among them a potager, a bocce court, a firepit, and an amphitheater—plus a round pool 50 feet in diameter.…