Innehållsförteckning för May 2024 från Architectural Digest

SHEER GENIUS ROOM TO ROOM, HUNTER DOUGLAS’S PROVENANCE WOVEN WOOD SHADES FORM A DIAPHANOUS THROUGH LINE WHILE BALANCING NATURAL LIGHT AND PRIVACY (HUNTERDOUGLAS.COM). POWER GRID HAND-PAINTED IN BENJAMIN MOORE’S MANCHESTER TAN, HARLEQUIN SQUARES LEND GRAPHIC CHARM TO THE KITCHEN’S WHITE-OAK FLOORS (BENJAMINMOORE.COM). SHADES OF BEIGE THE BEDROOM COMBINES THREE MORE BENJAMIN MOORE COLORS: MYSTIC GOLD FOR PANELING, BAR HARBOR BEIGE FOR WALLS AND CEILING, AND BEACH HOUSE BEIGE FOR DOORS. FOR MORE SMART IDEAS VISIT ARCHDIGEST.COM/AD-IT-YOURSELF…

Jessica Helgerson’s aesthetic sensibility is rooted in two distinct cultures. Born to an American father and a French mother, the Portland, Oregon–based interior designer grew up spending the school year in Santa Barbara and summering in Lyon, equally immersed in California surf culture and French savoir faire. Helgerson’s dual citizenship is unambiguously reflected in the two lighting collections she has created for Roll & Hill: One, Del Playa, is named for her SoCal street, while the other, Rue Sala, refers to her mother’s childhood address in the French countryside. Now, both sides of the creative coin find eloquent expression in the apartment that Helgerson has designed for herself and her family in Paris. Helgerson’s European homecoming kicked off three years ago, when she lived with her daughter in the City…

Growing up in Burlington, Vermont, Xavier Donnelly was surrounded by scenery as his mother, a painter, worked on theatrical and cinematic backdrops. “There was always a big mural project going on,” reflects the designer and creative director of the New York–based firm Ash. Decades later, a similar sight has unfolded in Donnelly’s own West Village apartment, where canvases stretched across the floor have evolved into romantic landscapes and celestial vistas. They’re all part of Donnelly’s dreamy new wallpaper collection for Backdrop, a brand best known for its tightly edited palette of paint colors. “It really does feel like Xavier may have popped into your room with his own brush,” Backdrop cofounder Natalie Ebel says of the line, the company’s first wall coverings collaboration. Two of the four patterns come as…

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Lucky guests at Le Sirenuse invariably talk of the view. Perched on Italy’s fabled Amalfi Coast, the hotel enjoys sweeping vistas of cliffside Positano and the Tyrrhenian Sea, its azure depths dotted by boats. And it was precisely this panorama that inspired artist Nicolas Party when, tapped to reimagine the property’s pool, he spent a blissful week on-site soaking up the dolce vita atmosphere. To channel the landscape while taking care not to compete with it, the Swiss-born star composed a vibrant tableau of overlapping abstract forms reminiscent of earth, water, and sky, albeit with no discernible horizon line. “Are they mountains? Are they clouds? Or are they like waves or smoke?” says Party, musing on the finished result, which was translated from his pastel sketch and meticulous digital template…

“I haven’t been everywhere, but it’s on my list.”—Susan Sontag Armchair travelers, rejoice: AD took a jaunt around the world for our May International issue, and the pictures are worth a thousand words. If you, too, are working on “everywhere,” consider this a little shortcut. The richly individual residences and projects shown this month are so powerfully evocative that you might feel you have journeyed to Ibiza, Costa Rica, Lagos, the French countryside, Mexico, and even Los Angeles just by turning the pages. Add the passionate language each homeowner uses to describe the singular lure of their chosen locale, and the picture is complete. Acclaimed artist Yinka Shonibare, who is based in London, returned to his hometown in Nigeria to build a spectacular artist’s residence that doubles as his own…

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East meets West at the new Hôtel Hana, a 26-room gem designed by AD100 star Laura Gonzalez with artistic director Olivier Leone, and set in Paris’s Little Tokyo district. Throughout the property (the latest addition to the Adresses group) Gonzalez deftly blends the quartier’s historic Belle Époque maximalism and contemporary Japanese minimalism, employing iroko wood and straw wall coverings in ornate settings. Chef Shirley Garrier’s menu carries on that dialogue in the cozy restaurant, while the cave-like spa features kobido treatments. hotelhana-paris.com…

Hermès has a long history of collaborating with artists and designers: In the pre–World War II years, the house used Sonia Delaunay fabrics and produced Jean-Michel Frank furniture, since reissued. More recently, Op Art legend Julio Le Parc produced a limited series of silk carrés. So when Benoit Pierre Emery, creative director of Hermès Tableware, wanted to introduce a new dinner service, he rang Virginie Jamin, a beloved French children’s illustrator who had already designed an ashtray and 30 scarves for the house. What they created together is Tressages Équestres, a 27-piece collection with 10 new hollowware shapes, all decorated with jaunty swirls of ropes, cords, and straps inspired by equestrian tack—the brand’s original métier. Jamin dived into the project three years ago by visiting the Hermès archives in Paris.…

Six years ago, when designers Nick Ozemba and Felicia Hung launched their hit lighting studio In Common With, the duo dreamed about their future New York City showroom. “Maybe it would just be a bar, more of a hospitality space where we can actually engage with people,” Ozemba recalls thinking. Fast-forward to May 13: The company is opening Quarters, a rambling two-level flagship in Tribeca that’s part store and part hangout, with a full kitchen, dining room, bedroom, and much more. Here, in a sophisticated yet casual context, friends and clients can encounter the brand’s versatile hand-finished designs alongside a revolving cast of vintage finds and new collaborations—among them partnerships with Sophie Lou Jacobsen, Danny Kaplan, and Shane Gabier, who created tile for backsplashes and bathrooms. All told, Ozemba and…

Beginning in the 1940s, Italian architect Gio Ponti created a series of refreshingly modern riffs on the wingback chair. In one, a sinuous carved wood frame was topped with fat cushions. In another variety—this one fully upholstered—the “wings” seemed to be folded from its sides like origami. So in 1963, when Italian heritage brand Bonacina 1889 asked Ponti to design a chair in their hallmark bamboo and rattan, the maestro thrilled at the chance to revisit the form in yet another medium. The resulting steam-bent wicker BP16 armchair—later renamed the Continuum—gave the illusion that it was constructed from one continuous reed. “It highlights the characteristic of the material that allows soft folds without interruptions, joints, or welding,” explains Salvatore Licitra, Ponti’s grandson and the founder of Gio Ponti Archives. “He…

The legend of Louis Vuitton is often told in broad strokes. What is now an international luxury brand began as a trunk atelier, founded by its namesake Parisian in 1854. His son, Georges, later took the reins, followed by his son, Gaston-Louis—each generation making its own innovations. “The story has been told many times,” reflects architect Shohei Shigematsu, a New York–based partner of OMA. Epic tales, of course, bear repeating. So when the brand tapped him to conceive an exhibition, he immersed himself in the archives, challenging himself to dig into the details and revisit the narrative with fresh eyes. His vision comes to life at the new LV The Place Bangkok, a first-of-its-kind flagship for the brand, with a café, restaurant, and galleries. Titled “Visionary Journeys,” the exhibition immediately…

Bulgari’s new Serpenti watches by Tadao Ando may catch some by surprise. Though the Roman jewelry house and the Japanese Pritzker Prize winner have teamed up before, their latest project marks the first time the brand has invited someone to update the Serpenti: a high-glamour icon beloved by the likes of Elizabeth Taylor. But if Ando’s hallmark minimalism and the timepiece’s cult luxury status sound like strange bedfellows, there’s magic in the unexpected. Bulgari and Ando first collaborated in 2019 with his reimaginings of the Octo Finissimo, a series that fits complex watchmaking into a shockingly thin case, pushing the technical limits of the craft. The architect’s two limited-edition models, made of titanium and ceramic, married his propensity for simple geometries and his rigorous focus on materiality. A third version…

Fragile though the state of the world may be, Matthieu Blazy, the creative director of Bottega Veneta, is finding comfort in the concept of rebirth. “These are the flowers that bloom after the earth is burnt—they give a sense of hope,” he wrote in the notes for the brand’s winter 2024 show. “They come back stronger than ever. Here, elegance is resilience.” It’s a theme he hammered home on the runway, from the clothes (think scorched colors and singed motifs) to the sets, which featured adaptations of Le Corbusier’s iconic LC14 Tabouret Cabanon seat. The latest in Bottega Veneta’s recurring collaborations with Cassina, each box featured a bespoke charred finish, as if history were reemerging from the ashes. Blazy first encountered the LC14, Le Corbusier’s clever 1952 twist on a…

Faced with staying a few nights in a city they often visit, most people check into a plush hotel. Tino Zervudachi, on the other hand, wanted a pied-àterre that reflected his own sensibility. “I have lots of work in Greece, enough to bring me here once a month, so Athens feels like home,” says the AD100 interior architect and decorator, who has a place on the Aegean island of Hydra (AD, April 2017) and jets between Paris, London, New York, and Los Angeles, where he has offices. After a year of searching, Zervudachi settled on a top-floor flat on a quiet street in the city’s shopaholic-ready Kolonaki district. (Yes, he can see the Acropolis.) “It ticked all the boxes: It was a ruin, nobody had done anything to it since…

Known for manufacturing top-quality window systems, Sky-Frame has built its name blurring boundaries between indoors and out with floor-to-ceiling expanses of glass. Now the Swiss brand—long the go-to source for AD100 architects on the order of Steven Harris and Bjarke Ingels—has further dissolved that divide. This March, Sky-Frame unveiled an automated update to its Pivot door, allowing users to open or close the portal at the tap of a smartphone or button. Laser sensors, meanwhile, detect any obstacle, stopping the partition in its tracks should an object or a pet fall behind. sky-frame.com…

In 2014, the celebrated British Nigerian multidisciplinary artist Yinka Shonibare returned to his hometown of Lagos for the first time in more than two decades. He hosted a symposium that proved both game-changing for those in attendance and life-altering for him. “The talk was packed with young artists, and I realized that there was a need here; young artists needed to be mentored,” he says. He flirted with the idea of erecting a museum of contemporary art, but ultimately decided that a “grassroots” approach would be more impactful on the local creative ecosystem. In 2019, he founded Guest Artists Space (GAS) Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to research, facilitating international cultural exchange, and—with the opening of its two locations in 2022—fostering the next generation of creatives through 4-to-12-week residencies. While ambitious…

Not far from the Fontainebleau forest, in the Seine-et-Marne department of France, lies a country property so charming and picturesque yet sophisticated, it seems like something dreamed up by a Hollywood set designer. Composed of several buildings around a courtyard with two huge, historic linden trees growing in the middle, the property is home to sheep, chickens, dogs, cats, horses, and two miniature donkeys—there are even beehives. Welcome to the residence and atelier of French designer Eric Schmitt and his lifelong partner, Alexandra Babeanu, who goes by Sandra. Though probably best known for his sleek furniture designs (represented by Ralph Pucci International, Carpenters Workshop Gallery, and others), Schmitt is always creating and exploring. Self-taught, he continues in a long tradition of French decorative artists working in everything from bronze to…