Innholdsfortegnelse for May/June 2025 i Dwell

A patio or a porch, a backyard or a garden, even a tricked-out fire escape—an outdoor space can be as important a part of your home as the living room. Yes, it might be a personal escape to meditate and chill or a place for amusement-park-level family activity, but the sun really shines when you’re hosting friends, neighbors, and strangers in an open-air social space. The homes in this issue all present possibilities for what a great outdoor environment for entertaining can be. In Puerto Escondido, a Venezuelan creative and her architect friend enjoy hanging out in a palapa-draped A-frame (p. 72). The hefty concrete stairs at the heart of the home do a great job anchoring the invitingly open house. The porous screens at the Los Angeles home of…

On a street of gray Vancouver specials (a boxy style of home mass-produced from the 1960s through the ’80s) and plain-vanilla, vinyl-sided ranchers, the Fluevog family’s jagged, mint-colored house, with its wild, wonderful cutouts, will make you look twice. “The neighbors call it a ‘shape sorter’ house,” says homeowner Ali Palmer-Fluevog, who lives there with her husband, Adrian Fluevog, and their two young sons, Jonah and Lucas. It’s a moniker she and Adrian—CEO of John Fluevog Shoes, the cult fave Canadian brand founded by his dad in 1970—take as a compliment. “I’ve grown up making ‘unique soles for unique souls,’” says Adrian. “I’m used to quirkiness.” Vancouver firm MA+HG Architects is to thank for this eye-catching, 3,155-square-foot salute to Euclidean geometry. “We were trying to riff on this notion of…

In the spring of 2020, when Covid lock-downs began, Manny Rionda retreated from his home in Guatemala City to his family’s finca, or ranch, in the highlands 35 miles to the west. At first he lived with his parents in their two-bedroom 1960s house on the mountainous estate, but he fell in love with country living and decided to stay. His parents granted him some space on the working farm to build his own home, and Manny, a fashion photographer and furniture designer, got to work on his first architectural project. Casa Zanate, as Manny named it, doesn’t immediately reveal itself. Manny minimized its footprint to avoid damaging the coffee, macadamia, and guava trees on the site, and the home—a 1,480-square-foot, single-story box—is shrouded in greenery. “The trees here are…

When Amalia Branaa Donner and Uzi Sabah moved from Los Angeles to Montevideo, Uruguay, their hometown, at the height of the pandemic, they had to find a rental quickly. They had moved back because Covid was less prevalent there, and they wanted to reconnect with family. A brisk search led them to a house in a residential area that had been off their radar: Punta Gorda, a neighborhood built on a low hill overlooking Montevideo’s riverside promenade, known as La Rambla. The couple enjoyed staying there and, during one of their afternoon walks, noticed a mid-century house that was uninhabited—and for sale. It had a simple, rectangular exterior, and because it was built on a slope, the back of the property had views over the neighborhood’s rooftops and treetops and…

Daniel Dorsa Photographer “On the Grid,” p. 62 In high school, Daniel Dorsa took a darkroom photography class on a whim. “After that, I just got hooked,” he says, and he’s been taking pictures personally and professionally ever since, on commissions for editorial clients and for fine art books. For this issue, the L.A. photographer focuses on the home of artist Charles Gaines. “I’m a big art lover in general. So getting an opportunity to meet an artist that I know and admire is amazing,” says Dorsa, who heard Gaines play some piano during the shoot. “I asked Charles to play, if he would be comfortable. Then he gets on the piano and he’s ripping it up.” Anna Braz Editorial fellow Before becoming an editorial fellow at Dwell, Anna Braz…

“I didn’t want something that was so out of place in the neighborhood that it would disrupt it. The facade of the house is approachable. It’s not this giant thing.”Roxana Landaverde, resident When you see them from the street, the perforated white metal screens seem a little on the nose. Layered onto the facade of the house that artist Charles Gaines and his wife, Roxana Landaverde, an historian focusing on Mesoamerican and Mexican art, are renovating, they look conspicuously like the grids that form the basis of Charles’s celebrated work. “I never really thought about it,” he says of the resemblance as we prepare to tour the house on a beautiful Los Angeles day in April. I’m not sure I believe him. But in any case, the screens are the unifying…

Splashing Out Throwing an epic party outside requires more than just some space and a cooler. If you really want to stage events to remember, then you’ll have to think beyond the menu. Furniture, lighting, and even hardscaping can take backyard entertaining from just okay to amazing. If the idea of updating your patio feels overwhelming, don’t give up! We asked five (over)qualified hospitality experts for tips on executing their ideal outdoor event—from a chic block party to a laid-back dinner—and we also recommend a few new products to set the scene, whether you’re game for a major renovation or just sprucing things up for the season. A Backyard Chill For Natasha Pickowicz, a New York pastry chef turned writer and recipe developer, the season for outdoor entertaining starts early.…

When I was a kid, bath time for animals meant rinsing Ellie, our family’s eager-to-please Yorkie-poo, in an unfinished concrete sink or, during one misguided incident, plunging our distraught cat, Chester, alongside me in an alcove tub. The awkwardness of bathing our dirty pets—whether you care for a fluffy Pomeranian or a scruffy retriever—is universal, which is why some are tackling the problem head-on with design. In 2025, pets are rarely relegated to the doghouse. The proof is in the numbers: Millennials, many of whom are delaying or not having children, are investing in their fur babies: 70 percent of 983 surveyed millennial and Gen Z pet owners report having a budget solely for their pets, according to a study by The Harris Poll. “When I was younger, our dog…

In 2017, Deborah Castillo was walking on the beach in Puerto Escondido, Mexico, with no other people except a lone fisherman: “It was like a dream,” she says. “I love being on my own on a beach, reading or listening to opera.” The artist was visiting from New York City for an art fair, but she felt a pull to stay. She scoured the area for For Sale signs with no success, but after enough asking around, she found and bought a lot just a six-minute stroll from the beach. Together with her longtime friend, Los Angeles designer Ana Lasala, Deborah began envisioning a home that could embrace Puerto Escondido’s contrasts. Here, the Pacific brings waves that attract surfers from all over the world but also hurricanes. And the abundant…

After finishing my education, I moved to Seattle and got my first job at a landscape architecture firm, where I surrounded my desk with plants. I worked on some awesome projects, including Seattle’s Olympic Sculpture Park and the Anchorage Museum, but I was working a lot of hours—so many hours, in fact, that I forgot to water my plants, and they all died. I couldn’t keep anything alive! I jokingly told people the dead plants proved how dedicated I was to my work, but truth-fully, I was a little worried about what it meant for my future. Around this time, I went to San Francisco to visit a couple of friends from grad school, and one of them was giving out Chia Pets. I got this Chia bunny and was…