Indholdsfortegnelse for January/February 2026 i Architectural Digest

“Practice creates the master.”—Don Miguel Ruiz The through line among the many wildly different projects in this issue is a balance of both virtuosity and ease. That makes perfect sense in this annual celebration the AD100—each talent is at the top of their game, doing what they do best and doing it their way. Take the pair of covers: The legendary Frank Gehry tears it up in Silicon Valley with a sculptural, eyepopping private residence that proves his singular vision and powers continue to astonish, while in Manhattan Alexandra and Michael Misczynski of Atelier AM show their signature prowess with sublime restraint and quiet luxury. Britt Moran and Emiliano Salci, the Milanese masters of Dimorestudio, give a classic London flat their trademark moody and cinematic Italian touch, while Heidi Caillier…

In what would become an iconic 1970 photo shoot, Slim Aarons snapped a glamorous poolside crowd at Richard Neutra’s Kaufmann House in Palm Springs, California. Some partygoers perched on sinuous midcentury dining chairs. Others reclined on matching chaise longues. The furniture in question? Vladimir Kagan’s 1952 Capricorn collection, crafted out of white powder-coated steel. Difficult to produce, with its combination of sculptural curves and weight-bearing mesh, the series stayed on the market for less than 10 years. Now, the late designer’s brand has revived the coveted set. The new editions debuted at Holly Hunt’s Miami showroom this past December during Design Miami. When the German-born New Yorker, inspired by the work of Harry Bertoia, first conceived the collection, it was no easy feat to pair swooping silhouettes with precise grids.…

GREGORYROCKWELL.COM Most people learned the name Gregory Rockwell when AD’s February 2025 issue hit newsstands. The cover featured one of his first completed residential projects: the Brooklyn town house of supermodel Paloma Elsesser. That interior—with its Milanese-inspired kitchen and unforgettable oxblood marble bathroom—may have put Rockwell on the map, but he’d been honing his skill for nearly a decade, establishing his eponymous firm in 2017. Whether he’s crafting a pied-à-terre in a landmarked Greenwich Village building, a 1930s lakeside property in Maine, or his own 1800s Federal Colonial home in Millerton, New York, Rockwell balances elevated custom-made touches (think: a bespoke tassel for a light fixture; a closet wrapped in custom millwork) with a smart selection of vintage and antique. The resulting look—tailored, eclectic, and highly personal—comes from research, and…

“Kendall likes the process and has a strong point of view. She really wanted something that felt a bit playful.”—Heidi Caillier…

How does one distill the identity and ambition of a country into a singular building? When it came to the United Arab Emirates’ (UAE) new Zayed National Museum, architect Norman Foster took inspiration from the late Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, the driving force behind the creation of the gulf state. “He had a vision for what the UAE could be and believed in its potential as a place for driving innovation that was rooted in the heritage of its people,” says Foster, who, through an international competition, was awarded the project in 2007. “Our approach was driven by an exploration of a building’s role as a national museum, to honor the relationship between the landscape, setting, and cultural context, lensed through the values and character of the late…

Massy Mehdipour is not your typical Silicon Valley mogul. She began her career at Bechtel, the multinational engineering and construction firm where she managed projects around the world, and for all her experience in digital technology—she has founded two companies and is a major venture investor—she has always felt equally comfortable in the realm of real-world architecture and building. She has been a longtime client of the interior designer Paul Vincent Wiseman and has commissioned vacation houses from the architects Ricardo Legorreta and Peter Bohlin. When it came time to plan a new home base for herself in Silicon Valley, she saw no reason to lower her architectural ambitions. She was a longtime admirer of Frank Gehry, whose work she viewed as the benchmark against which others were measured, and…

On a visit to the British Museum in the 1930s, the American interior designer T.H. Robsjohn-Gibbings found himself entranced by several fifth-century vessels from ancient Greece. “On these vases I saw furniture that was young, untouched by time,” he later reflected on the lifestyle imagery of the classical period. “Vitality surged through this furniture.” He was contemplating the klismos, a sculptural chair with a curved backrest, woven seat, and tapered saber legs that swoop like apostrophes. In the images—now mostly found on funerary vessels, painted pottery, and bas-reliefs—sitters assume a relaxed posture, their hands often gliding to rest on the low back. “Not a single chair like that survives,” explains George Manginis, academic director of the Benaki Museum in Athens. “The earliest revivals we have are from the 18th and…

The Milano Cortina Olympic Village may never steal the spotlight from the neighboring Prada Foundation, with its gold-leafed tower and retractable stainless-steel walls. But the global architecture firm Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM) designed the athletes’ housing, on the site of a former rail yard, to make an important contribution to the Porta Romana area. The 2026 Winter Games, in Milan and elsewhere in Northern Italy, will span just over two weeks, from February 6 through 22 (followed by the Paralympics in March). “But I had the next 50 years to think about,” says SOM partner Colin Koop, the project’s principal designer. After the Games end, a few adjustments will turn the Village into dorms for some 1,700 students. Its six long buildings contain seven floors of mainly single rooms…

At his studio in Brooklyn, Thomas Yang displays tools like works of art. Hung from his Shaker-inspired rail system are woodworking planes, hammers, knives, brooms—even the odd kitchen strainer. “There’s something celebratory about the care it takes to mount something on the wall,” the designer reflects on the array of instruments, some of them inherited from his grandfather. “But there’s a utilitarian aspect, too.” These are the implements that, at arm’s reach, he grabs to turn rocks into stools or salvaged wood into seating. Born in Canada to parents of Taiwanese and Italian descent, Yang first came to New York City to study product design at Parsons. Within a year, however, he found himself disillusioned with the realities of mass manufacturing, in particular its questionable environmental practices. Rather than become…

Forget about Pinterest boards and magazine clippings. The design brief that Mike and Sharon Matas compiled at the outset of their Sea Ranch odyssey delivers a veritable master class in the art of communicating intent, philosophy, and aesthetic direction. Peppered with archival drawings of The Sea Ranch, quotations from the utopian community’s founding architects, and evocative family photographs, the document eloquently illuminates the Matases’ vision for their seaside idyll. Sections of the introspective manifesto include How We Rest, How We Play, How We Eat, and Bringing the Outside In. The brief concludes with a quote by architect Charles Moore that neatly sums up the essence of the couple’s endeavor: “The Sea Ranch has been my Mother Earth, a place where I have gone, and continue to go, to have my…

WHEN JESSICA SAILER and her husband fell for an 1870s Italianate building on a quiet block in Brooklyn Heights, they were willing to endure a number of attendant concessions. Given considerable renovation delays, the couple and their three young children went through a series of small rental apartments and, for a period, lived exclusively on the home’s top floor. There, meals were cooked on a hot plate in the laundry room while Sailer, a jewelry entrepreneur and former fashion editor, who had a broken ankle at the time, would descend four flights of stairs sitting down. While the couple originally had a minimalist, Parisian vision in mind after they decided to work with Remy Renzullo—with his own passion for 18th-century houses and layered interiors that look like they’ve been lived-in…

UNVEILED THIS PAST NOVEMBER, the new home of the Studio Museum in Harlem cuts a fine figure on the local skyline, its stacked form, clad in dark-gray cast concrete, spanning the depth of a block. But look up from 125th Street and you might just spy a banana leaf waving above, where AD100 landscape architect Sara Zewde has designed a must-see garden for the beloved 58-year-old institution, dedicated to the work of Black and African diaspora artists. On its rooftop, surrounded by sweeping city views, flora both familiar and unexpected now converge in homage to the neighborhood—its legacy and its future. “Gardens aren’t just things to look at,” reflects Zewde. “They’re important to how communities evolve and social movements happen.” She is speaking from her parlor-level office at the corner…

Prospect and refuge: These two themes have long guided the work of Tom Kundig. Siting houses in some of America’s most breathtaking but also rugged terrains, the AD100 architect takes care to create a deep sense of shelter—nestling buildings into hillsides, even blasting into rock—and engineer awe through sweeping vistas and intimate connections to nature. “Architecture is not the center of the world,” he has often said. “It’s the landscape that’s the center of the world for me.” Now Kundig, a principal of the firm Olson Kundig, has translated those same principles to One&Only Moonlight Basin, a new hotel and community of private residences in Big Sky, Montana. A one-hour drive from Bozeman, the resort settles into the northeastern side of majestic Lone Peak, at the edge of an untamed…

JHINTERIORDESIGN.COM Portland may be a long way from Paris geographically and culturally, but few interior designers connect the dots more elegantly than Jessica Helgerson, who lives and works in both Oregon and the City of Light (AD, May 2024). Although her far-flung projects all share a kind of unpretentious beauty and ease, her portfolio demonstrates a remarkable elasticity of spirit and vision. And that’s the point. “Our style is responsive,” she insists. “The success of a project always lies in the answers to these three questions: What is right for the place? What is right for the building? What is right for the client?” Along with residential projects up and down the West Coast of the US and Canada, Helgerson’s namesake firm is currently tackling assignments in Georgia, South Carolina,…

GRTARCHITECTS.COM Founding principals Tal Schori and Rustam Mehta first met as third-graders. Both would study at Brown University; both would work as studio assistants for artists; and both would get their masters in architecture from Yale before cutting their teeth at top firms. (Schori worked for Michael Maltzan Architecture and Deborah Berke, and Mehta for Pelli Clarke & Partners, prior to founding GRT in 2014.) That creative synergy now comes across in their confident and deeply original work, which balances material innovations and historic sensitivity. Take, for example, the pair of adjoining 1840s Brooklyn town houses that GRT recently brought back from disrepair—restoring and updating their landmark Greek Revival shells according to Passive House standards while transforming each interior into a complex canvas for radical expression (AD, April 2025). Tapped…

A certain fearlessness is required to commit to a sectional sofa fashioned from 50 yards of Lee Jofa’s bold Hollyhock Handblock print, the granniest grandma-chic fabric. But under the direction of interior designer Heidi Caillier, the iconic floral was stretched over an expanse of down in a Los Angeles workroom, shipped to a top secret mountain location, and deposited in Kendall Jenner’s new living room. A less expected match made in heaven has never existed. “I’m beyond happy with that couch,” says Jenner. “There has never been a doubt in my mind about the fabric. From the moment I saw it when Heidi and I started working on this project, I never wavered.” In a way, this singular piece—in Jenner’s first ground-up build, designed with Bay Area architect Kirby Lee—represents…

“We weren’t trying to create a museum piece from 1965. Everything feels honest and true to who we are and how we live.”—homeowner Mike Matas…

Eaton Square is one of those London addresses that everyone knows; each white stuccoed façade is embedded in history. Politician Neville Chamberlain lived at number 37 in the 1920s and 1930s, before becoming prime minister; James Bond is its most famous fictional denizen, and composer Andrew Lloyd Webber was a more recent celebrity resident. The Georgian doorways on this elegant garden square have welcomed the rich, the famous, and the feared. Before its development starting in the 1820s, what is now Eaton Square was part of a no-man’s-land frequented by robbers, highwaymen, and gentlemen fighting duels. Today it’s hard to imagine such a raucous scene. On a subdued morning in May, the square feels COVID-era quiet; few cars, few people, only an elderly lady, exiting a grand porch and stepping…

SOFT-SPOKEN AND GROUNDED, Stephen White has little interest in accolades. “The work was always appreciated by those who knew it,” he says with a shrug. “I never felt unrecognized.” Now, at last, the design world’s attention has arrived, just in time for White’s retirement. The 86-year-old recently handed off his practice to his daughter, Simone White, a transition that coincided with what Simone calls “a dramatic increase in interest.” In recent years, several AD100 designers have helped elevate White’s profile by installing his fixtures in rooms worthy of his artistry. “I was struck immediately by the quiet poetry of Stephen’s work,” Pamela Shamshiri says of discovering White through LA’s Twentieth Gallery. “His pieces have a natural presence, almost like an animal.” Echoing that sentiment, certain “organic element that can be…