Innholdsfortegnelse for April 2024 i Architectural Digest

WASTE NOT TO SLICE HER CARBON FOOTPRINT, VALLETTA UPCYCLED WHENEVER POSSIBLE, FROM THE HOME ITSELF (A SPEC HOUSE MID-CONSTRUCTION) TO THE REPURPOSED FURNISHINGS. BRUSH WITH GREATNESS WITH AIR QUALITY IN MIND, SHE AVOIDED WALL FINISHES LADEN WITH VOCs. OUR PICK FOR ECO-FRIENDLY PAINT? LITTLE GREENE’S ARRAY OF COLORS (LITTLEGREENE.US). LAYER UP VALLETTA BOOSTED THE HOUSE’S ENERGY EFFICIENCY BY INSTALLING DOUBLE-GLAZED WINDOWS. FOR SIMILAR, TRY MARVIN’S HIGH-PERFORMANCE MODERN LINE (MARVIN.COM). FOR MORE SMART IDEAS VISIT ARCHDIGEST.COM/AD-IT-YOURSELF…

Several years ago, jewelry designer Madina Visconti di Modrone was walking around Milan’s Cinque Vie neighborhood with her mother when they glimpsed a courtyard past an unassuming façade. “I would love to live in a palazzo like this one,” Visconti di Modrone recalls remarking. At mom’s urging, she asked the doorman if there were any units for sale in the building, a converted 17th-century convent. He grabbed a set of keys and took them for a look. “The apartment was completely destroyed,” she continues. “But I saw these super-high ceilings, the big windows—the rooms. And I could imagine it all in my head.” The “it” of which she speaks is a diamond in the rough polished to perfection. “I wanted to really express myself,” Visconti di Modrone explains of the…

having first risen to fame in the 1990s, influential supermodel Amber Valletta remains very much in demand, fronting campaigns for such luxury brands as Loewe, Saint Laurent, Stella McCartney, and many others. But she is also a leading climate change activist: She serves as British Vogue’s contributing sustainability editor and the Karl Lagerfeld brand’s sustainability ambassador, and has participated in several of Jane Fonda’s Fire Drill Fridays protests in Washington, DC, where she has been arrested a few times alongside other activists. (Full disclosure: She recounted how Fonda “was there with snacks when you got out of jail” during an interview with me for my podcast, The Green Dream.) Valletta tries to fold her pro-environmental ethos into every corner of her life, including her home. Thus, she, her fiancé,…

At its heart, this project is a love letter to Northern California’s West Marin region—a paean to the area’s history, landscape, craft traditions, and bohemian soul. Alex Riley, a prominent local designer and poet of organic architecture, built the original 1,000-square-foot house for himself in the 1960s. When the property changed hands in the late 1980s, Riley added a primary suite and a compact guest cottage for the new owners, evolving his signature design language of clerestories and trusses. “Our challenge was to pick up the thread where Alex left it, to honor the architecture while giving the home a fresh spirit and purpose,” says Commune Design’s Roman Alonso, the designer entrusted to renovate the house for its current owners, a pair of creative polymaths and philanthropists active in the…

“How little can you do to realize the most impact? That is the future of architecture.”—Dan Stubbergaard In the face of climate change and the myriad obstacles to living an individually and collectively earth-friendly lifestyle, it’s understandable to feel overwhelmed and even defeated, but I found this month’s profile of influential Danish architect Dan Stubbergaard and his firm Cobe uplifting, inspiring, and full of hope and encouragement. The city of Copenhagen, a sustainability success story, is Stubbergaard’s playground—“a utopia of bike lanes, pedestrian thoroughfares, and swimmable waterways, the envy of urbanites the world over,” writes AD’s global features director, Sam Cochran. Stubbergaard himself conceived of many of these canals, plazas, and green spaces, including the new Opera Park and Paper Island, a mixed-use development. It is exciting to see a…

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When Isabelle Moltzer’s parents reluctantly sold the Domaine de Bailleul in Normandy in 2011, she believed she would never return. “It was nightmarish,” she recalls. “It took two months to move everything out.” What made it particularly traumatic was that the 50-hectare property had been in the family since the mid 16th century, when its château was built by one of her ancestors, Bertrand de Bailleul (he is said to have welcomed Mary, Queen of Scots, there). “My attachment to the estate is visceral,” says Moltzer. For years afterward, she avoided going anywhere near and deliberately made detours when passing through the region. Now, a curious twist of fate not only finds her back working at Bailleul, but also ecstatically ensconced in her childhood home—an outbuilding called La Maison Normande,…

Rising above the sands and streets of Dubai, the new One&Only One Za’abeel hotel is an oasis of luxury, with fine-dining destinations galore, top-notch accommodations designed by Jean-Michel Gathy, and seemingly limitless opportunities to indulge. But its building, one of an asymmetrical pair, is also a marvel of contemporary engineering by the architects Nikken Sekkei. Spanning and extending beyond the side-by-side skyscrapers is a gleaming horizontal platform, dubbed The Link and hailed as the world’s longest cantilever at 755 feet. (Weighing over 9,400 tons, it must also rank among the heaviest.) To construct it required seamlessly joining eight separate sections, the combined breadth of which is now home to a sweeping infinity pool and beach club in the sky. “How can we come up with a new symbol that is…

Paavo Tynell is often called “the man who illuminated Finland.” And while that may sound like an exaggeration, take a stroll through Helsinki and you’ll see the designer’s distinctive fixtures all around town—chandeliers in the Central Railway Station; sconces, table lamps, and more in the Original Sokos Hotel Vaakuna. But it was only when Tynell came to New York City, in 1948, that he and his lights began to plot world domination. Tynell, a trained metalsmith who cofounded the lighting manufacturer Taito Oy (taito means “skill” in Finnish) in 1918, had been summoned to Manhattan to oversee installation of the brand’s latest fixtures at Finland House, a showroom set up by the Finnish-American Trading Corporation to bring Finnish design to a US audience. Here, he would unveil one of his…

COUNTRY Pastoral flair, rustic charms, and green-thumbed glamour for the salt of the earth. Shown is a Connecticut garden by Miranda Brooks. CITY Strong silhouettes, soigné finishes, and all-weather materials for the elegant urbanite. Shown is a Manhattan terrace of AD100 designer Andre Mellone. COAST Blue accents, sturdy essentials, and beachy vibes for carefree days by the sea. Shown is the Montauk, New York, pool of fashion designer Ulla Johnson, with gardens by Miranda Brooks.…

“I ask myself why I kept so many things. Perhaps subconsciously, I knew I’d need them again one day.” “I wanted a house that wasn’t all about the decorating, so you feel like it’s been there forever.”—Isabelle Moltzer…

on a typical weekend, the vibe along Bourbon Street, at the heart of the fabled French Quarter in New Orleans, is one of hustle and bustle and booze. But just a block from that party atmosphere, an unassuming façade gives way to an altogether different world: a simple grid of four modest rooms. “You are so close to the action but have this quiet sanctuary,” says Sukey Novogratz, describing the Big Easy pied-à-terre she shares with her husband, Mike, and their four kids. Cozy yet full of character, the home is the perfect escape from the noise. Until, of course, the family makes their own. On nights when they are in town from New York City, friends pack into the jewel-toned interiors as drinks flow from the sinuous fluted bar…