Innehållsförteckning för July/August 2022 från Architectural Digest

Casey Zablocki is sleep-deprived. It’s mid-April; his ceramics studio has been running 24 hours a day for the past week; and he’s working the night shift, firing the wood-burning kiln from midnight to six in the morning. “It’s a physical and mental marathon, like running up a mountain,” Zablocki says by Zoom. After the call he’ll doze a little, chop more wood, and do it all over again. This is how the artist works. Due to the risk of forest fires in his home base of Missoula, Montana, he limits himself to just two main batches a year, once in April and again in December. At the time of our conversation there was even more heat as he prepared for his September solo show at New York’s Guild Gallery, the…

boxy Chandigarh chairs and raw linen. Dinesen oak floors and rustic farm tables. Fifty shades of beige. “I didn’t want any of that,” Mary Kitchen avows, rejecting the current vogue among Tinseltown’s elite for soft, hushed minimalism and all things Perriand. “I wasn’t looking for a cool midcentury house in the Hollywood Hills, with exquisitely tasteful interiors,” she says, adding emphatically, “I didn’t want a house that looks like everyone else’s.” Mission accomplished. Ably abetted by her team of, well, let’s call them her enablers—interior designer Jamie Bush, architect William Hefner, and landscape maestro Raymond Jungles—Kitchen has conjured a blockbuster vision of Los Angeles swank, at once nostalgic and contemporary, sexy and funny, high-brow and low. With its circular skylights, color-blocked rooms, and pink-tinged indoor-outdoor terrazzo floors, the house represents…

Certain cities are known for iconic architects, talents whose houses and apartments set knowledgeable hearts aflutter. In the historic Florida resort community of Palm Beach, one of those visionary builders was John L. Volk, an Austrian émigré who arrived on the gilded island in the 1920s and left a legacy of villas ranging in style from Mediterranean Revival to neo-Georgian. “My grandparents’ house was a Volk,” says Emilia Fanjul Pfeifler, a cofounder of the Drawing Room, an elegant pop-up space on New York City’s Upper East Side. “His work has such a distinctive look, especially the way he handled windows, which are a real giveaway if you’re familiar with him, and the staircases are always so pretty.” So when she and her financier husband, Brian Pfeifler, decided to make Palm…

At the American Academy in Rome, a Baroque villa atop the Eternal City’s second-highest hill, the recipients of the annual Rome Prize gather five days a week for lunch at 1 p.m. After loading their plates at the buffet, these 30 or so scholars and creatives in residence sit at tables that run the length of the courtyard’s loggia. That community and diversity of expertise is, according to current architecture fellow Germane Barnes, “one of the cool things about being at the academy.” While breaking bread, he muses, you could ask any question aloud, like What were the racial dynamics of ancient Rome? “And an archaeologist might chime in.” (The answer? It was complicated.) In his own work, Barnes, founder of the Miami-based Studio Barnes and assistant professor at the…

When it comes to Italian fare, Robert McKinley is a well-established expert. The New York–based designer has left his soigné stamp on multiple restaurants for Sant Ambroeus and Felice, all hits with the contorni crowd. But his latest project—a debut line of furniture and lighting—might just be his most personal homage to the Bel Paese yet. Named Monea, after his mother’s family, the collection celebrates his Italian roots through form, materiality, and spirit. Sofas err on the side of sexy and low-slung, with one modular option using an ingenious system of clips and straps to bind seats with backrests and armrests. Occasional tables are similarly clever, combining fragments of richly veined marble with timber columns or spheres, the latter peeking through stone tops via circular cutouts. Lighting nods more directly…

lla Johnson and Zach Miner can’t stop talking about their garden. “It’s a spring bounty every weekend with new things in bloom,” says the fashion designer. Her verdant surroundings, after four years of work with landscape guru Miranda Brooks, are finally coming into their own. Bulbs planted last fall are pushing up through the soil. Magnolia trees are blossoming. A flash of pink—the petals of a flowering cherry tree—is visible just outside the living room window. The couple have relished the process. “A garden takes time to grow into itself,” explains Johnson. “Things move around and find their home. Things you plant come back in a slightly different place. It’s such a beautiful evolution.” The same could be said of their home out east, constructed circa 2010 by MB Architecture,…

“I’m old-school. I want to see it, touch it, talk with the dealer. I’m tired of buying things online.”—Frank de Biasi “Brian and I really care about every last doorknob, and Frank allows us to get really involved.”—Emilia Fanjul Pfeifler…

Known for outfitting social butterflies in voluminous couture, Giambattista Valli is now applying his skills to dressing the table. The designer’s first tabletop line, created with Moda Operandi, takes cues from his fanciful frocks while showcasing the artisanal traditions of makers like Augarten Wien, Tessilarte, and Lobmeyr. Moda’s Lauren Santo Domingo notes, “Craftsmanship has always been central to Valli’s designs, and this collection is no exception.” Or as he puts it: “I love to work in harmonies, giving atmospheres and bringing a dream.” modaoperandi.com…

“Everything has a story. The house is really a gathering of emotional touchstones.”—Ulla Johnson “In the summer we leave the windows open, and you’re just here amid the breeze.”—Zach Miner…

Just over six years ago, Manhattan interior decorator Nick Olsen recalls, “I was very busy with work and feeling a bit bedraggled—why couldn’t I do something just for me?” The answer to that stressed-out lament swiftly presented itself: a dilapidated daffodil-yellow 18th-century farmhouse in New York’s Dutchess County, shingled and humble and straightforward, and as spare and square as a sugar cube. Driving to and from a photo shoot at a client’s house in the area, Olsen had cast covetous glances over the property, which was prettily perched atop a hill overlooking a main road. One inquiry later, it turned out that it had been for sale forever. Emboldened, he made a lowball offer that, to his surprise, was instantly accepted. His new two-bedroom getaway possessed all the requisite swoon-worthy…