Dwell September/October 2023

According to a Zillow study, painting your walls gray will entice potential buyers to offer up to $2,512 more for your home. When the company released that figure earlier this year, some homeowners living among gray walls professed paralysis, claiming online with varied degrees of irony that they wouldn’t dare paint their home any other color for fear of devaluing their property. I get it. If you’re lucky enough to own a home right now, it’s likely your biggest, most unpredictable asset and a constant source of anxiety in a market that doesn’t seem to be following any kind of inherited logic. But even joking about living under the tyranny of a trend as simple as a paint color seems like a particularly cruel form of alienation from the place…

Carol Sachs Photographer “Open Invite,” p. 90 Early on in Carol Sachs’s career, she documented theater life in her home country of Brazil. “I really liked the backstage,” says Sachs. “Seeing the sets being built, people rehearsing, and costumes and the makeup coming together.” These days, that interest in getting a behind-the-scenes look extends to all sorts of topics, from denim production in Japan to meals by Michelin-starred chefs and personal homes. For this issue, the Amsterdam-based photographer traveled to Kosovo to depict a colorful apartment and capture the everyday lives of the residents and how they adapt their home for the regular community gatherings they host. “Design is everywhere, part of every aspect of our lives.”Adrian Madlener, Writer Ryan Lowry Photographer “Mediterranean Revival,” p. 46 Ryan Lowry picked up…

“Beautiful and perfect. It has everything one needs inside and more than you will EVER need outside. Ocean, land, living with nature, off the grid. I’d love to stay tuned for where Chris takes this.”Robert via Dwell.com I am a graphic designer and would love to know what typeface was used for headlines in the article on Italian huts on page 73 [in the July/August issue]. Stunning, bold, and elegant all rolled into one. Thank you! MAUREEN FARR MOZELLE! STUDIO GRAPHIC + WEB DESIGN Dwell’s creative director, Suzanne LaGasa, responds: Thanks! We selected Buona by Outlet, which was inspired by Italian type dating back to Roman stone carvings. A good fit for a cover on the Italian Alps. Thank you for your part in curating and editing one of the…

It makes me dizzy and is too 1950s. @vanessavolkommer It’s too busy for my eyes. @teamkarim Love it, BUT my mother discovered that it was hard to keep clean! Muddy footsteps were very visible on the light tiles, and dusty ones on the dark tiles. @marinearmstrong It’s hard for me to see it and not think of Instagram. Kate Dries, executive editor Seems to get popular every thirty years. Can we be done with checkerboard already?!? @scabpicker It’s classic IMO. It’ll never go out of style. @_lauraturner_ Always a classic, but I’m afraid it’s becoming the new chevron. @randi.redmon It reminds me of my college rental, which is enough for me to check it off my list. Ian Zunt, digital marketing associate Love how it can read vintage…formal…cozy…grand… utilitarian…like great…

When it comes to the places celebrities call home, we’re a nosy society. Before celeb YouTube home tours, we had shows like MTV’s Cribs, and glossy magazine spreads showcasing A-listers’ mansions date back to Hollywood’s golden era. We’ve long loved to see where the rich and famous lay their heads and to meet the architects who have designed extraordinary homes for them. Here, Dwell looks back at a century or so of remarkable talent whose California homes for the stars shaped the everyday taste of their times. It’s hard to imagine a more intimidating celebrity client than William Randolph Hearst, the 20th-century media magnate and Citizen Kane inspirer. Julia Morgan, the first licensed female architect in California, however, learned to speak Hearst fluently. Starting in 1919, Morgan spent nearly 30…

MONTREAL / @CLARAJORISCH Clara Jorisch On her website, Clara Jorisch describes herself as a “self-taught designer and crafts(wo)man from Montreal” whose work “streams from useless ideas and integrates deliberate imperfections.” Though her background is in graphic design, Jorisch formed her final project at the University of Quebec in Montreal around a catalog for what became her debut furniture collection. It included a limited series of hand-cut mirrors with “broken lines” designed to play with visual perception. Recent work has been similarly quirky: The Pouf collection includes soft tuffets of upholstered foam wrapped in rope so that they bulge in various places. Her Melting Glass tables have a similarly contorted profile, with ovoid tops supported by slumping glass legs that look like vases that are wilting. For Jorisch, who says her…