Innholdsfortegnelse for November/December 2025 i Dwell

The homes in our annual American design issue all draw from history. Not the standard narrative, but one that’s real. It’s a story that comes out of the queer, Black, Indigenous, and other histories that have built truly great architecture in Dwell’s home country. It’s complicated and messy, but it’s more important than official traditions. It looks back. But it looks forward. Some homes in this issue play with Gilded Age excess, like two townhomes (p. 64) in tony Sutton Square, an early-20th-century New York City enclave of exclusionary wealth. Renovating one—let alone two—may be an elite problem to tackle, but both homes contain ideas about preserving original buildings while updating them for contemporary life that could work in any historic home. One also contains stories about the unconventional households…

An Ecology of Quilts: The Natural History of American Textiles at the American Folk Art Museum New York Taking an eco-critical perspective on the natural history of American textile production, the Ecology of Quilts exhibition at New York’s American Folk Art Museum (on view till March 1, 2026) is a comprehensive survey of the medium’s evolution throughout the country’s history. The show investigates the environmental and social implications of harvesting raw material, the nature of the American textile trade, and the technology involved. The thematic exhibition frames this exploration through the lens of quilting, featuring nearly 30 diverse works from the 18th century to the present day. Liz Collins: Motherlode at the RISD Museum Providence On view at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) Museum until January 11, 2026,…

One could easily spend a lifetime in New York City without knowing about Sutton Square, the historic, ultraexclusive enclave of 14 townhouses clustered atop a soundproofed overhang above the FDR Drive parkway, other than perhaps to notice that at the eastern tip of 58th Street sits the iconic bench on which Woody Allen and Diane Keaton watched the sunrise in his 1979 rom-com, Manhattan. But architect Adrienne Brown worked on a house in Sutton Square as one of her first jobs out of school, so she was well familiar with it when she and her husband, Jonathan Marcus, a computer programmer, returned to see a home her parents were interested in. She knew how the square, bounded by 57th and 58th Streets, Sutton Place, and the East River, was envisioned…

Artist and educator Andrea Yarbrough was woodworking and teaching the trade from her home on Chicago’s South Side. But the summertime wave of commissions, followed by winter lulls, was difficult, as was hustling to find fabrication services and studio space outside the small woodshop in her basement. In 2021, she saw a long-abandoned building in the West Englewood neighborhood listed for less than $5,000 and decided to buy it. In 2023, Yarbrough convened a Zoom with 40 other artists. “I was like, Hey, y’all, I bought this building,” she says. “Anybody want to start a co-op?” Yarbrough and four other creative workers—photographer Kayla Reefer, poet Saleem Hue Penny, artist and fabricator Andrés Lemus-Spont, and sculptor Tavia David—have since founded Cooperation Racine, a worker cooperative association, to reimagine Chicago’s art and…

Since 2023, the pioneering L.A.-based design gallery Marta has been located in a corrugated steel-and-concrete garage built to house construction trucks in Silver Lake. Two oversize roll-up doors, which occupy most of the building’s facade and reduce the available wall space by a quarter, might have discouraged other prospective owners—especially those in the business of exhibiting art and design objects—but not curators Benjamin Critton and Heidi Korsavong. Reimagining the garage as an indoor-outdoor gallery space, they lined the twin openings with corrugated polycarbonate and transformed the front lot into a welcoming garden, ideal for displaying sculptures and hosting community gatherings. Critton and Korsavong have always been drawn to liminal spaces. The couple, who moved from New York City to Korsavong’s hometown of Los Angeles in 2016, began Marta in a…

Evan Nicole Brown Writer “Curatorial Statement,” p. 90 As a Los Angeles native, journalist Evan Nicole Brown knows what people say about her home-town. “People joke about L.A. being a city full of suburbs,” says Brown. As someone who covers art, architecture, design, and culture, she sees it differently: “Each neighborhood has its own character.” For this issue, Brown profiles a homebuyer in historic View Park who found her designers through Dwell, and the resulting remodel impressed the writer. “I am admittedly a bit of a historic preservationist in the sense that I love for older homes to retain their character,” says Brown. “But this story really opened my eyes to the potential of a gut renovation.” Matt Martian Williams Photographer “Down to Earth,” p. 40 Matt Martian Williams bought…

Early Blueprints Born in Chicago in 1871, months before the Great Chicago Fire, Marion Mahony spent much of her formative years witnessing the city’s reinvention through development. Raised largely by her mother, aunt, and grandmother (her mother was a prominent school principal who socialized with suffragists), Mahony pursued architecture even though, at the time, women were almost entirely excluded from the profession. In 1894, Mahony became the second woman to receive an architecture degree from MIT and returned to Chicago to work as a draftsperson for her cousin, architect Dwight H. Perkins. The next year, after they were introduced by Perkins, Wright hired Mahony at his burgeoning practice, which eventually became his Oak Park, Illinois, studio (above left). The decision was groundbreaking for the era, though the pair had much…

Even before Covid hit, Nicolette Ross, now 40, was contemplating a move. She was part of a community of artists and entrepreneurs in Chicago—she managed a printmaking studio and freelanced as a printmaker and custom binder—for a decade. But in 2020, because of Covid social isolation, Ross and her coworker spent less time in the studio together, interns left when schools shuttered, and her husband’s work at a brewery slowed. It was lonely, Ross says. City life around them seemed to wilt. “I think so much of what makes Chicago amazing is the opportunities: You can get out and see people and connect on a personal level, face to face,” she says. It became a “static” time, she says of 2020, when “the city didn’t feel alive anymore.” The death…

As soon as Nancy Brown walked into 13 Sutton Place, a nearly 4,000-square-foot, three-bedroom, six-bathroom town-house with unfettered views of the East River, she announced that she was going to live there. Just as quickly, her adult daughter, architect Adrienne Brown, asked her, “What, are you going to have sixteen adopted children?” Nancy and her husband, Greg Brown, had long been empty nesters. A decade ago, they downsized to an apartment when they moved to New York from Michigan, where Nancy had worked as a professor and associate dean at Oakland University before becoming a dean at SUNY Old Westbury; Greg ran his own manufacturing business and still regularly commutes back to Michigan. Now, they were pulling a rare upsizing. When the family first saw the house, it was a…

Last year at R & Company gallery in Manhattan, Objects: USA 2024 opened. The first show cocurated by Kellie Riggs and Angelik Vizcarrondo-Laboy oversaw a massive assortment of pieces. Focused on American art, craft, and design, the nearly 100-item show expressed itself as a push-pull between maximalism and restraint, collecting works across disparate mediums, cataloging subversive and affirmative things. The work also reflected the two curators’ contrasting backgrounds and tastes. “Angelik is into more, more, more,” says Riggs, “and I’m into less, less, less.” Riggs, who has a jewelry background—as a curator and maker—is drawn to “pared-down work,” items that “subvert or embrace function.” For Vizcarrondo-Laboy, formerly part of the Museum of Arts and Design’s (MAD) curatorial team, “I like having a story behind things,” she says, “Things need to…

Modern architecture can be a break with the past, an opportunity to shed some of the cultural baggage of traditional styles. When my parents, Sylvia Balderrama and John Morley, were rebuilding their decaying family Adirondack cabin, going modern meant breaking free of both local clichés and some of the strictures of my somewhat severe ancestors. My great-grandfather, a semi-itinerant Methodist minister, originally followed a church leader to summer in a rural area by Lake Champlain, where a group of fellow ministers camped in small cabins that were less like shore resorts and more like monastic retreats—no indoor bathrooms, hot water, or any other decadent amenities. Even interior doors were frowned upon because of what naughty hijinks could happen behind them. (Playing cards was forbidden, to say nothing of more mature…

40 Down to Earth Gustavo Silva and Logan Havens silvaandhavens.com 41 Lounge chair by architect Cade Manning Hayes of Dust Architects dustarchitects.com; Pier shelf system from Hay hay.com; Alvar Aalto 60 stools from Artek artek. fi 42 Vintage dining table by Alvar Aalto from Artek; Eames molded plywood dining chair from Design Within Reach dwr.com; vintage P376 pendant andtradition.com 43 Mags Low sofa from Hay hay.com; Akari lamp by Isamu Noguchi noguchi.org 46 Legacy Project Charlie Lazor and Brent Holdman lazoroffice.com Braden Construction bradenconstruction.com Structural engineering by Linderman Engineering & Consulting lindermanec.com Cabinetry by Space Theory spacetheory.com 46 Fiber-cement siding from James Hardie jameshardie.com; windows from Marvin marvin.com 47 Vintage Egg chair by Arne Jacobsen; vintage Womb chair by Eero Saarinen; coffee table by Jens Risom; floor lamp from Louis…

“I love weird!” @paigekblake Re: “How the Shelter Magazine Evolved With America.” September/October Your failure to include Sunset magazine in the synopsis of “shelter journalism” is a REALLY glaring one. And Architectural Digest has nothing to do with “shelter.” Unless it’s a form of sheltering one’s riches. EUGENE ELY You never show TVs in any photos, yet everyone has at least one. Some three or four. I think it’s informative to see how they integrate them in their design.  RON STONE I’ve been a longtime subscriber to the magazine. When I received the 25th Anniversary issue this month, I had such anticipation on diving into all those rich years of design inspiration. Instead, I was met with a mishmash of articles that really didn’t pay homage to a 25th Anniversary…

A Stitch in Time With the reemergence of fiber craft in recent years, rugs and tapestries are not just functional pieces but opportunities for adding artistic flair to a home. Independent designers have gotten wittier with their knits, using new fabrication technologies. Experimental tufting and knotting techniques transform simple wall hangings into fine art. Glass, wood, and metal are being threaded into designs. Wovens have become more expressive, more pictorial, and more conceptual. A number of American (or America-based) fiber artists continue to interpret the craft in unconventional ways. Grids & Geometry Crisp lines. Angular corners. Symmetrical shapes. There’s a timelessness to this aesthetic that makes these floor coverings versatile. But throw in a few off-kilter grids and color combinations and all of a sudden these rugs offer a bold…

Photographer Logan Havens was between gigs when he began to look for a renovation project where he lives in Tucson, Arizona. Within his price range and a three-mile radius of down-town, where he wanted to be, “there were, like, two options,” he says. One in particular had a cracked facade and awkward additions, among other issues—no street appeal here. But a parapet hinted that it might be a historic adobe original to the Barrio Kroeger Lane neighborhood, one of Tucson’s oldest. The location, in fact, is what ultimately convinced Logan and his partner, designer Gustavo Silva, to purchase the home for $142,000 and make it their primary address. Regular bike rides downtown and to a favorite plant nursery in the neighborhood would take them right past the 1930s property, which…

At street level, the outline of Pete Galli and Stephanie Wolff’s Silver Lake, California, home is deceptively unassuming, just a single story of redwood siding under a gabled roof. The view from the backyard, however, paints a remarkably different picture, with three stories descending a precipitous hill. They appear to sit inside a box of white stucco with two enormous holes cut out. Inside, however, the rooms are an immersion in wildly unexpected colors, textures, and impeccable views. This is the Bernardi House, the former home of David Bernardi, an entertainment executive who sold it to Pete and Stephanie last fall. He bought it in 2003 for the now-unimaginable price of $390,000 while it was still an ordinary Spanish-style duplex. Fritz Haeg, a Rome Prize–winning artist who studied architecture under…

When Nicole Boone, an art-loving Ohio native, wanted to put down roots in Los Angeles, she looked for an environment that was rich not only in culture but in beautiful architecture, too. She chose View Park, a historically predominantly African American neighborhood, where she found a single-story ranch home that was the perfect fit for her discerning eye. It had the classic charm of a modern-meets-Spanish-revival-style mash-up typical of California, an aesthetic that celebrates the history—and diversity—of the land. But it needed to be rearranged to suit a contemporary lifestyle, with a focus on opening up the narrow alcoves of the past. Fortunately, Nicole’s attention to detail during a casual magazine read paid off when she began looking for help. She had seen the work of Max Kuo and Danielle…

One of my first experiences playing with furniture was with a dollhouse I had as a kid. I found it in a junk store in Waltham, Massachusetts, where I grew up, and I loved setting up the rooms and creating little vignettes; sometimes I would make furniture out of toothpicks or matchboxes. My mom still has the dollhouse, and later, after I had trained in woodworking, I wanted to make some new furniture for it, so I found these kits. They’re DIY kits from the 1970s by the X-Acto company for making tiny 18th-century American furniture, exactly the kind I am classically trained to build, but in miniature. You need your own tools, like a chisel, and the upholstery is challenging to make. But it was exciting because the kits…