Indholdsfortegnelse for April 2025 i Architectural Digest

“Preserving a machiya takes a lot of effort. But we think keeping an existing structure for generations instead of tearing it down and rebuilding is much more sustainable.”—Yuki Shirato, homeowner in Kyoto As the editors of AD curated stories for this issue, themed around sustainability, we found that all the projects were, coincidentally, in some sense historic. Some homes were very old and had been sensitively renovated. Others were structures not intended for residential use but which had been cleverly repurposed, such as an industrial barge turned houseboat in Paris. Even the glorious Hudson Valley rose garden featured this month is part of a 120-acre estate that had previously been owned by a single family for five generations. Under the thoughtful stewardship of its current owners, the forested land is…

For the AD100 firm Pierce & Ward, the opportunity to create a collection for West Elm represented a gratifying full-circle moment. “When we started out, it was one of our go-to resources. That was when we’d have a modest budget to decorate a 6,000-square-foot house,” recalls Louisa Pierce. Her partner, Emily Ward, echoes the sentiment: “We relied on them for things that combined quality with good value. This was our chance to build on that legacy.” The 100-piece collection encompasses furniture, curtains, lighting, tabletop, accessories, wallpaper, and rugs. Dexterity—in style, materials, and application—is a hallmark of the group. “There’s a broad mix of genres and aesthetic sensibilities, much the same as we decorate our projects,” Pierce says. “Certain pieces have a lean, Japanese quality, and others feel like they were…

Past the rare cacti and viridescent plant life at Sofía Londoño’s Los Angeles studio, saucer-size ceramic medallions hang from hooks on the wall. “This is my glaze library,” explains the artist, who, working out of a greenhouse-like space in Glassell Park, assembles such components into murals. “On the back of each one I’ve written the chemical formulas.” Science has always been a passion. “Biology was my first love,” explains Londoño, who moved to Miami from Colombia as a teenager seeking political asylum. “But art saved me.” These days, those two interests entwine in her practice, for which she’ll spend hours looking at leaves, bugs, moss, and other natural tidbits through a microscope. (It helps that her atelier is part of a compound that includes AD100 landscape studio Geoponika.) Cellular structures,…

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Julia Watson was 11 when, in 1989, the Exxon Valdez ship spilled more than 10 million gallons of crude oil into Alaska’s Prince William Sound, killing scores of animals and gravely impacting the region’s Indigenous communities. She can still remember sitting in her Brisbane, Australia, home watching television footage of scientists washing birds with household detergent. That disaster confirmed her sense that, she says, “there was something humanity wasn’t doing for the oceans that we should have been doing,” prompting her to announce her plans to become a marine biologist. Ultimately, Watson, now based in Brooklyn, took a different path, studying landscape architecture. But her practice and new book, Lo—TEK Water (Taschen, June 2025), show that same understanding of place and instinct for problem-solving. The volume is a sequel to…

In 1927, fresh out of university and newly married, a young Charlotte Perriand moved into a former photography studio on a corner of Place Saint-Sulpice in Paris. Inspired by the materials and fabrication of automobiles, she clad furnishings, including her garret bar or bar sous le toit, in chrome or nickel, trying out an industrial aesthetic that would soon catch the eye of her mentor and collaborator, Le Corbusier. Within that avant-garde apartment, though, textiles added softness, whether the leather pillows adorning the sofa or the abstracted mountain motif of banquette upholstery. Now, in collaboration with Louis Vuitton, Perriand’s estate has revived these patterns (as well as others from an early sketchbook) in a new collection of pillows and blankets, launching this April during Milan’s Salone del Mobile fair. “Her…

When conceiving its first Italian hotel, on a Florentine hill, Auberge Resorts Collection found inspiration in the site: an erstwhile school, dating back some 250 years, with its own chapel, library, and theater. “We channeled that sense of learning and curiosity in the concepts and styling,” says Kemper Hyers, the group’s chief creative officer, who collaborated on the design with local firm ArchFlorence. The interiors of the 83-room Collegio alla Querce may at first look austere, their muted palette drawn from the countryside. But they took care to inject playfulness. Case in point: What was once the headmaster’s office is now a cocktail and cigar bar. Though the heart of the hotel, Hyers insists, is the conservatory dining room, where guests can sip an espresso or aperitivo surrounded by preserved…

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“Rather than updating the machiya to suit contemporary life, I am interested in how contemporary life can be updated within the framework of the old machiya.”—Kazuyo Sejima A taxi can only get you so close to this traditional machiya, tucked at the end of a T-intersection on a pedestrian-only street in Kyoto’s Nishijin neighborhood. But approaching the residence on foot, on a cold evening in early January, the place works its magic before you’re even in the door. It radiates a warm glow, the slatted wood façade revealing a passing glimpse of its residents inside. They’re preparing dinner. “We’re trying to make machiya livable in the modern era,” muses Sam Brustad, a communications consultant from New Zealand who moved to Japan more than a decade ago. He’s just pulled a…

Opposite Abu Dhabi’s bustling carpet souk, what was once a swath of sand has been reborn as a monumental twist on tradition thanks to Christopher Joshua Benton. Collaborating closely with local merchants and artisans, the American artist (based in the United Arab Emirates capital) has created a nearly 30,000-square-foot field of hand-cut Astroturf, its pixelated composition reminiscent of Afghan war carpets and woven kilims. “My studio is only five minutes away from the market, which quickly became one of my favorite places in the city to decompress,” reflects Benton, who conducted drawing workshops, interviews, and more with locals to mine motifs from their diverse homelands. “We did everything possible to put the merchants at the center of every stage.” The vibrant results—titled Where Lies My Carpet Is Thy Home and…

Ross Cassidy and Jed Weisman come across a lot of extraordinary homes in their lines of work—Cassidy an AD100 star with celebrity clients on speed dial, Weisman a design-savvy real estate agent with listings across Los Angeles. So this couple knows a good house when they see one. Such was the case when they visited a quirky property for sale in the hills above West Hollywood, along what had once been just a dirt road. Built in the 1920s and later owned by decorator Craig Wright, the property was a palimpsest of bygone eras, its Spanish Colonial Revival shell containing the mark of many hands. “It had been reinvented so many times,” says Cassidy, charmed by its various anachronisms. “I knew we could write its next chapter.” History is an…

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For more than a century, Château de Beaucastel, a vineyard in Provence, has produced some of France’s finest Châteauneuf-du-Pape and Côtes du Rhône. During much of that time, owners Jacques and Marguerite Perrin followed the biodynamic practices of philosopher Rudolf Steiner, expanding the winery in the 1950s to increase quantity and quality. All the while, the couple lived in the vineyard’s historic stone house, Marguerite remaining long after Jacques’s death in 1978, and resisting change to it or the architecture. “Once I’m gone,” she told her grandchildren, “you can do as you please.” Following her passing in 2016, the cousins decided not only to renovate the property but rethink it, nearly doubling the size of the winery and turning much of the house into reception and tasting spaces. And in…

“My design process always comes down to three words,” says AD100 talent Jean-Philippe Demeyer. “Chaos, creation, and harmony.” As every interior designer and client knows all too well, chaos can be an inherent aspect of many renovation projects. How does Demeyer work his way through chaotic beginnings? “I’m theme-obsessed,” he replies. “Once the theme is known, it gives structure and limits possibilities. At the end of the project, I know harmony will be present. There may be 40 colors, but there will be harmony.” Nowhere are Demeyer’s words more truthfully and artfully evident than in a recently completed project located in the rolling hills outside of Ypres, Belgium. (Architect Peter Bovijn and landscape designer Bart Monbaliu also worked on the property.) In this case, the theme arrived with crystal clarity…