Innehållsförteckning för July/August 2024 från Dwell

I can’t write at home. At least, I can’t start a creative project there. Or at the office, really. I need a change of scenery, a switch of context, that vaunted third place with the right amount of distance from duties and distractions. Travel is the best way to find that sense of separation. A slightly buzzy hotel lobby, where I focus by tuning out ambient conversation, is my ideal destination. To some people, this sounds terrible, and they may set out for a contemplative cabin in the woods or an elemental shack on the beach. Wherever you prefer to venture, our annual travel issue celebrates stirring spaces, the places people go not just to find inspiration but to do something with it. For architect David Ross and his husband,…

In the beginning, when John Vugrin first began working on the project that would come to define his career, the Kellogg Doolittle House in Joshua Tree, California, the locals struggled to comprehend it. “It was more a curiosity” than a serious endeavor, as Vugrin recalls. Sited amid a mass of boulders abutting Joshua Tree National Park, the house seems teleported from some distant dimension—an armadillo perched on the hillside, perhaps, or an alien hideout. It was Kendrick Bangs Kellogg, an admirer of Frank Lloyd Wright, who conceived of the otherworldly architecture in the late 1980s. But it was Vugrin, a designer, fabricator, furniture maker, and all-around master craftsman, who spent the ensuing two decades giving life to the swooping forms, handcrafting every last detail of the house, both inside and…

Originally, Nicolas Potts just headed to Saugerties, New York, on weekends. But over the years, the idyllic forests around the upstate town became too hard to resist. His time in Manhattan started to dwindle, and trips to the Catskills became more frequent. Now a full-time Saugerties resident, Nicolas and his partner, photographer Emma Pilkington Mead, are enticing others with a new vacation rental. Just across from their home on a one-lane road is a tiny cabin: a simple wooden and black metal box with a sloped roof and a carved-out porch beckoning visitors in. The 475-square-foot house is a collaboration between Nicolas (a self-described jack-of-all-trades now wearing his interior designer hat), Emma, and architectural designer Christos Athanasiou. The latter was introduced to the couple by a mutual friend who identified…

My family moved to Tucson from Colorado when I was in high school, and it was the first time I experienced desert monsoons. If I climbed up on the roof of my house, I could see storm clouds roll into the city. First I would see the rain coming, and then I would smell it. For years, I thought the aroma was the smell of the desert and monsoons. I didn’t know it had another source, because it’s so subtle. One day, when I was visiting Arizona after moving away to New York, I was on a walk with my friend Weston Westenborg, who used to work in horticulture, and he pointed out the creosote plant. He said, “If you rub the leaves together, you have this amazing smell.” It…

It’s 98 degrees on Lanzarote, one of Spain’s Canary Islands, yet sitting in the office of her home in the historic town of Teguise, architect Patricia Betancort Ramos is comfortably cool. Behind her is a limewashed wall punctuated with patches of gray—the result of moisture rising through its ancient stone structure, and the island’s perpetually humid climate. While most designers might try to conceal this natural phenomenon with layers of primer and paint, Patricia has embraced it. These walls are a signature of her home, which she shares with her husband, three young children, and two dogs. Measuring 4,225 square feet with three open-air internal patios, it has room enough for everyone. The original structure, which she estimates dates back to at least 1900, had been in her husband’s family…

Write a book. Sing a song. Paint something. And let these CREATIVE ESCAPES offer inspiration. I moved to Bali with my husband and our daughter. We built a life and a home that I never expected. Growing up in Georgia and spending my adulthood in California, I never—truly never—imagined I’d raise my family in a rose-colored villa in Bali, designed by my husband and my father, with an assist from me. But here I am with my spouse and two kids in a home near Uluwatu, where the view progresses from our pink swimming pool to emerald treetops, sapphire sea, and silhouettes of volcanoes to the north. Originally, this house was supposed to be my dad’s. I had my own next door. A decade ago, freshly laid off from my magazine…

Day/McBride Residence N ARCHITECT Ryan Leidner LOCATION Joshua Tree, California In Joshua Tree, California, the dream home of painter Heather Day and creative director Chase McBride sits on five acres at the end of several miles of sandy, unpaved road. When visitors walk through the front door at dinnertime, they’re greeted in many ways at once: Heather and Chase wave as they cook in the kitchen; their dog, Juno, jumps up to say hello; and the enormous glass doors in the living room, sitting open to let in the cooling desert air, frame a perfect view of the sun setting over a nearby mountain. The couple fell in love with the beauty and solitude of the desert while visiting it from San Francisco, and they hired architect Ryan Leidner based…

“A subtle, intelligent, and beautiful design reflective of the inhabitants’ sense of simple living. The way I would love to live.”@angelaballard3929 on YouTube Re: “Force of Nature: In tropical Singapore, a radically open home—without air-conditioning—connects a couple with plant life at every turn.” May/June What a complete 180 to most everything I consider as fundamental to designing a home. Doors, windows, and sunlight. And yet I love the result. A total meld between client and location. Simply impossible almost everywhere else, and for any other client. I would like to see how this concept ages over time. Does it endure, or does it feel more like an experiment? RICK LOWE ON DWELL.COM Beautiful, but curious what happens in the case of monsoon or typhoon? I’ve known people who live in…

It’s normal to end a trip with a suitcase a little heavier than it was when you left. But of all the discoveries you’ve acquired, the stuff you really want to take home, particularly after checking out of a chic boutique hotel, tends to be harder to transport: maybe those sleek, 1920s-inspired side tables or the thick velvet curtains with intricately braided trim or the handmade ceramics that feel like instant heirlooms. That’s why we talked with the designers responsible for the looks (and vibes) of seven of our favorite small hotels around the world about the childhood vacations, sunlight patterns, and city parks that inspired them to create spaces worth visiting. Plus, we recommend a few things that will bring the experience home. 1 Todos Santos Boutique Hotel TODOS…

It wasn’t just that they wanted a place to grow old in, here among the pines and firs of the famed Sea Ranch community in Northern California. David Ross and his husband, Mark Dutcher, wanted a place to grow old with them—a house that would bear, with unfussy equanimity, the various marks of its making and remaking and maturation. “There’s a lot of ‘finish fetish’ with architects,” says David, an architect himself and director of design at Frederick Fisher and Partners in Los Angeles, where he and Mark live part of the year. “There’s a tendency that, with whatever you create, it has to stand still and never age.” That’s not the house they’ve built on a little footprint of 32 feet by 32 feet, along with a small studio…

The road to Fairview, Tennessee, from Nashville is a quiet one, curving through forests and farmland, the cacophony of Music City dissolving into birdsong threading the air. Off one of these gravelly roads, tucked out of sight, sits a 60-acre compound built by Bob Butler, an architectural designer and founder of the design company Profile + Principle in Nashville. What was initially meant to be a place to explore architectural concepts has become a mixed-use compound that includes Snow, a micro, wellness-oriented retreat, and Adelaide, a midcenturyinspired home that he shares with his partner, Melody Geer, and their two dogs, three cats, and two horses. Having grown up in the bush in Australia, Bob wanted to buy an expanse of land to revisit his roots. And so, in 2019, after…

44 No Stone Unturned Patricia Betancort Ramos patricia-betancort.es 50 Always in Motion Frederick Fisher and Partners fisherpartners.net Empire Contracting empirecontractinginc.com Civil engineering by Dimensions 4 Engineering d4e.net Cabinetry by Redraw instagram.com/re.draw_taek Windows and doors from Fleetwood fleetwoodusa.com 50 Asphalt shingles from Owens Corning owenscorning.com 51 Wood-burning stove from Stûv stuvamerica.com; triangular side table by Redraw; Nuage aluminum vase by Ronan & Erwan Bouroullec for Vitra vitra.com; barn-door hardware from National Hardware national-hardware.com; artwork on sliding wood door by Mark Dutcher instagram.com/dutcher63 52 Green couch fabric from Maharam maharam.com; bed frame and bookshelves designed by David Ross and made by Redraw 53 Dining table and cabinetry designed by David Ross and made by Redraw; Akari pendant by Isamu Noguchi noguchi.org; stainless-steel faucet from MGS mgstaps.com; dining chairs designed by Enzo Mari…