Architectural Digest April 2022

Charles de Lisle’s renovation of a decrepit Sonoma County cabin (page 120) is a master class in the orchestration of hardworking industrial materials to achieve a look of effortless modern chic. Unlike his meticulously planned interiors for tech titans and other well-heeled clients, this project was an improvisational DIY effort, executed by the AD100 designer himself and a team of friends, artists, and artisans. And what’s the best thing about using ordinary off-the-shelf materials? It’s a lot less expensive than book-matched-marble walls and parquet de Versailles floors…. FOR MORE SMART IDEAS VISIT ARCHDIGEST.COM/AD-IT-YOURSELF MOP IT UP ATOP A STACK OF RECYCLED 4" x 4" POSTS, THE CONCRETE UTILITY SINK HAS A BRAWNY ELEGANCE, PERFECT FOR A RUSTIC CABIN. IF FRIENDS ASK, JUST WINK AND SAY IT’S A TADAO ANDO DESIGN. COVER STORY DE LISLE GAVE…

“I had been immersed in the romanticism of Bridgerton for a while…and then that inevitably spills into how the apartment’s going to look.”—Shonda Rhimes The people who share their residences with AD often describe them as a sanctuary, refuge, or escape. This issue features visionary creatives—architects, writers, interior designers, artists—in their private environments, which certainly offer refuge but additionally function as intensely personal incubators and laboratories for ideas. To decorate her romantic new apartment in New York City, our cover star, prolific Hollywood hitmaker Shonda Rhimes, once again turned to AD100 Hall of Famer Michael S. Smith, with whom she collaborated on the West Coast house we featured in February 2019. “This apartment is really about my work life,” says Rhimes. “Michael understands that I spend a lot of time inside my…

The best-known designs by Gerrit Rietveld—his circa 1920s De Stijl Red Blue chair, his 1930s Zig-Zag seat—do not exactly scream comfort. In fact, the Dutch architect often delivered his elemental furnishings with removable cushions, which, while rarely documented, were necessary aides for everyday sitting on such rationalist forms. But in 1935, when designing a mass-producible seat for the Amsterdam department store Metz & Co., Rietveld flipped the script. Once again he reduced a chair to its essentials—armrests bent at 90 degrees to form front legs; a seat tilted up, resting its behind directly on the floor. But this time he upholstered the wooden frame, top to bottom, in brown canvas, adding a white blanket stitch to accentuate the clean-lined geometric shape. “All of the models by Rietveld stimulated a lot of curiosity,”…

In London, the white stucco terraces of South Kensington still hold a quaint magic. Time unfolds at a slower pace among the garden squares—their lofty trees still looking down on benches, leaves drifting onto the glinting gold of the Albert Memorial. It is a very different world from the electric hustle of Manhattan, where interior designer Leonora Hamill and her husband, Hugh Barker, lived for six years before making the leap in 2019. But after chancing upon the ideal apartment—high above the tree line—while scouring the internet, she has not looked back. Signing the lease from afar, without ever having stepped inside, Hamill set about creating a richly layered sanctuary for her growing family. “I am a homing pigeon,” notes Hamill, who grew up in London until the age of nine,…

During the pandemic, so many people didn’t have an opportunity to interact much with nature—with crisp green grass, with beautiful blue skies,” says Corey Damen Jenkins. “They were stuck in their gray and beige apartments the whole time, and they developed a whole new appreciation of color and pattern.” Say hello to Trad Nouveau, the AD100 designer’s debut collection of fabrics and wallpaper, which he created for Kravet’s luxurious Kravet Couture label. Ranging from a romantic floral to a jazzy geometric to a subtle strié, the 10 new patterns are offered in vibrant jewel tones—ruby, sapphire, emerald, gold, and more—as well as executed in velvet, embroidery, and chenille. There is even a digital-print-on-cotton-velvet texture that recalls hand-painted Venetian papers. “It speaks to where we are at today,” Jenkins explains, though,…

Set atop a protected mangrove forest on Mexico’s Mayan Riviera, Etéreo—the latest hot spot from Auberge Resorts Collection—draws its name from the Spanish word for “ethereal.” And there is fleeting beauty to behold, from dazzling surf to starry skies. Still, the spirit of this hotel, which comprises 75 guest accommodations, is rooted in lasting traditions. When conceiving the interiors, New York City–based design studio Meyer Davis looked to the artisanal heritage of Mexico (where firm principal Will Meyer’s family has a home). Complementing modernist architecture by Migdal Arquitectos, materials err on the side of local. Case in point: the chukum plaster and Tzalam wood. Installations, meanwhile, bear the stamp of Mexican artists, like Daniel Barreto, who conceived the mural in the cevichería, and Marcela Diaz, who made the reception area’s…