Innehållsförteckning för June 2015 från Architectural Digest

MAKING A SPLASH Plunge into our slide show of the most epic hotel pools around the globe, from a cliffside stunner in Bali to a vast lagoonlike marvel in Chile. archdigest.com/go/hotelpools LEADING MAN After touring Giorgio Armani’s breezy Saint-Tropez house on page 102, explore more of the fashion icon’s stylish world with a behindthe-scenes look at his extraordinary life and career. archdigest.com/go/armani A LITTLE OFF THE TOP If you like putting your foot on the gas and feeling the wind in your hair, don’t miss our roundup of sexy new convertibles that do summer driving just right. archdigest.com/go/convertibles SHOW US YOUR STYLE READER GUEST ROOMS How far do you go to ensure your visitors’ dreams are sweet? Go to archdigest.com/go/readerrooms to submit photos of your most inviting guest room. Your…

Back in the 1930s, English architect Cecil Pinsent wrote that contemporary gardens “should give the impression of a house extended into the open air.” The exemplar, he argued, was Tuscany’s illustrious Villa Gamberaia, where virtual rooms—enclosed by dense hedges, carpeted with emerald turf or inset with shimmering pools, and punctuated by majestic topiaries—roll out from the façades. Few landscape designers working today have heeded Pinsent’s directive quite as magnificently as Luciano Giubbilei, the London-based mastermind of sculptural yet sybaritic environments as far afield as Morocco and Idaho, many of them conceived to encourage relaxing, dining, and entertaining from dawn’s early light until well after sunset. “When I started out designing gardens, I always had community in mind, creating places that are fundamentally connected to your living space, where you share…

WHEN YOU OWN SEVERAL HOMES AROUND THE WORLD, PLUS A STUNNING 213-FOOT YACHT, AS GIORGIO ARMANI DOES, finding days throughout the year to spend at each of those residences can be challenging—especially for an in-demand, workaholic fashion magnate. Yet no matter how stretched he gets, Armani always manages to make time to escape to his pistachio-shuttered stucco house in the leafy hills above Saint-Tropez, just a short stroll from the Mediterranean’s turquoise waters. “I go four or five weekends in late June and July,” says the designer, who carves out his time in Saint-Tropez with his usual exactitude. Mornings begin with a walk or a workout, followed by a visit to the beach for a swim with the locals. He typically has lunch at home, or, when he’s feeling more…

As summer wedding season kicks into high gear, this chapel on the grounds of a seaside resort in Onomichi, Japan, will no doubt attract design-minded couples from far and wide. Tokyo-based architect Hiroshi Nakamura envisioned the building (completed in December 2013) as two spiraling pathways that structurally support each other, their intertwined timber-clad forms converging some 50 feet in the air. In place of a traditional procession down an aisle, the betrothed can ascend the respective staircases simultaneously, taking in picturesque views at every twist and turn before uniting at the top. Beyond making for a poignant metaphor, the ribbonlike edifice is an impressive feat of engineering, realized in collaboration with the design firm Arup. Stabilizing the tower is a carefully calibrated network of steel columns that, like the building’s…

In design-magazine offices, the term spec house is an interior decorator’s dark secret, grudgingly revealed only under pressure and, if then, usually in a whisper. This has been especially true at AD, which for decades has been publishing some of the world’s most striking architect-designed residences. Yet in truth, large numbers of builder houses—as well as cookie-cutter condos—are being purchased every day. For many home buyers, spec isn’t a dirty word but simply a convenient alternative to waiting on a custom construction project or an extensive renovation. And if houses like these have been inspiringly decorated, landscaped, and otherwise improved, sometimes you’ll find them in our pages. This month we feature a Georgian-style residence near Manhattan that was acquired mid-build and handed over to designer Vicente Wolf. Despite neoclassical moldings…

When Design Within Reach (DWR) approached Chris Hardy about collaborating with Danish-born furniture legend Jens Risom on an update of one of his classic pieces, the young Atlanta-based talent felt some trepidation. Hardy, who had previously created a pair of tables for DWR, wasn’t exactly put at ease by his first meeting with the opinionated nonagenarian designer. “It was at a DWR showroom,” Hardy recalls, “and Jens walked up to a famous plastic chair, smacked it with his cane, and declared, ‘I do not like this.’ ” Any apprehension faded during their follow-up sessions at Risom’s Connecticut home, as the pair pored over old catalogues of his furniture. Inspired by a multifunctional cabinet he produced in the 1960s, they devised a new collection of modular storage, called Ven, which DWR…

When Johannesburg-based artist Serge Alain Nitegeka was 11 years old, an ethnic civil war drove him and his family to flee their native Burundi for neighboring Rwanda, which in short order fell victim to the same fate. “Nothing is ever normal once you’re forced out of your home,” says Nitegeka, during a visit to his temporary Brooklyn studio. That he is still haunted by his harrowing years as a refugee is made acutely clear in his imposing installations— tangles of black wood planks resembling makeshift barriers that require viewers to duck under or step through them, palpably channeling the fear and uncertainty of border crossing. While artists from Richard Serra to Anish Kapoor to Olafur Eliasson have long invited people to interact physically and sensorially with their monumenta sculptures, few…

Beverly Hills, California PEDIGREE: A true piece of Hollywood history, this Georgian-style residence was commissioned in 1934 by legendary movie mogul Samuel Goldwyn. The estate is being sold after the recent death of his son, producer Samuel Goldwyn Jr. Inside, touches of Tinseltown glamour still prevail. PROPERTY VALUES: Occupying two acres in the highly sought-after 90210 zip code, the verdant grounds include a dramatic forecourt, a pool, and a sunken tennis court. TALKING POINT: The plush screening room upholds the home’s cinematic legacy. CONTACT: Coldwell Banker Previews International, 310-285-7529 Chicago PEDIGREE: Built by architect Richard E. Schmidt for brewing tycoon Joseph Theurer, this 1896 Italianate manor was later bought by William Wrigley Jr. (of chewing-gum and baseball-stadium renown). The dwelling’s handsome terra-cotta façade gives way to renovated rooms brimming with…

Few things are simpler than the pleasures of a summer day: golden sun, rustling breezes, kaleidoscopes of shade. When the location is the South Fork of New York’s Long Island, add ocean-salted air to those attractions. But that atmosphere can be as elusive as a butterfly to capture and enjoy to the fullest. What one requires is a well-designed net, such as the seven-acre compound in Bridgehampton that was created a few years ago for a Manhattan psychologist, her investor husband, and their two daughters. It’s a getaway that the couple says “lives the way we like to live,” meaning easily but with loads of style. Alternating pale-gray brick walls with weathered tongueand-groove cedar siding, the single-story, 4,500-square-foot main house seems to rest quietly amid tall grasses, as attuned to…

REVIVALIST ARCHITECTURE CAN BE A FUNNY THING, revealing as much about contemporary tastes as it does about the era it aims to evoke. Just take the current interpretations of Shingle Style, a genre that originated in the 1880s and served as a transition between Queen Anne and Arts and Crafts. Today’s version, as commonly practiced in East Coast summer enclaves, has produced many lovely houses, but most are not, architecturally speaking, Shingle Style at all. Stately, restrained, and symmetrical, they’re more like Colonial Revivals in cedar-shingle clothing. So it’s refreshing to see a house like the one architect Joel Barkley designed in Southampton, New York, for Manhattan couple Kristen and Matthew Stein and their four children. In creating the beach retreat, Barkley, a partner at the New York– and San…

ESCAPE PLANS I love my new subscription. I never realized that the magazine would bring me travel inspiration! In the February issue, I loved the story Gregorio Marañón, the Marquess of Marañón, wrote about his country house in Toledo, Spain [“State of Grace”]. What a wonderful steward he is of his family’s idyllic property. The peek of its view of Toledo in the opening photo was enough for me to put this city on my wish list of beautiful places to visit. In the same issue, the feature on extraordinary recent architecture [“New Horizons”] introduced me to the Aspen Art Museum. I live in Colorado, so that is a much closer destination for me. Thank you for expanding the perspective of this new reader. MARTY MARSH Fort Collins, Colorado ENVIRONMENTAL…

Remains Lighting represents all that we stand for—American craftsmanship, environmental consciousness, and embracing diverse styles,” says Roman Alonso, a founder of the Los Angeles design firm Commune, which worked with Remains on a line of lamps, sconces, and ceiling fixtures. Reflecting Commune’s sophisticated eclecticism, the collection takes cues from the Vienna Secession as well as French and Milanese modernist design. “We like to mix and mash historical references—it’s a California thing,” says Steven Johanknecht, another Commune partner. Handcrafted in Remains’ LEED-certified Brooklyn factory, the ten pieces come in polished-brass, nickel, or waxed-bronze finishes, and most are available with optional detailing based on Commune’s signature Slash pattern. “The finishes aren’t lacquered,” says Alonso. “We welcome a natural patina.” communedesign.com and remains.com…

A stark travertine cube perforated by 216 arches, Rome’s Palazzo della Civiltà Italiana is a sixstory vision of loveliness with a freighted past. Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini commissioned the structure as an exhibition hall for a 1942 world’s fair that was canceled after he declared war on Britain and France, and it had languished ever since. But come fall, the magnificent white elephant, a midcentury take on the ancient Colosseum, becomes the headquarters for Fendi after an 18-month renovation. The move marks the fashion house’s 90th anniversary, as well as creative director Karl Lagerfeld’s 50th year with the company. “Karl told me that when he’s here, he feels like he’s on a spaceship being transported into the future,” says Fendi chairman and CEO Pietro Beccari, elated at taking possession of…

Arguably the most eloquent architect in American history, Frank Lloyd Wright once defined organic architecture as “the strength and lightness of the spiders’ spinning, buildings qualified by light, bred by native character to environment, married to the ground.” Although he was notoriously stingy with praise for his fellow practitioners, even he would be hard-pressed to deny that his lyrical description is matched with confidence and grace by an Aspen, Colorado, home fashioned by the architecture firm Bohlin Cywinski Jackson (BCJ), with interiors by Shelton, Mindel & Associates. Conceived for husband-and-wife philanthropists who live in Connecticut most of the year, the residence brokers an elegant rapprochement with its magnificent site by taking cues from the rugged topography of the Rocky Mountains and the earthy tones of the paradisiacal setting. “The house…