Architectural Digest February 2022

THIRST QUENCHER HEALTHY SPECIMENS NEED PROPER NUTRITION. SUPER KABUTO FERTILIZER SUPERCHARGES YOUR PLANTS’ DIET WITH EASILY DIGESTIBLE MACRONUTRIENTS AND MINERALS. POT SHOT SINCE ROT IS THE PRIMARY KILLER OF CACTI, STANDING WATER IS A BIG NO-NO. MAKE SURE THE POTS YOU PICK HAVE PROPER DRAINAGE. SHOWN IS A SELECTION OF CACTUS STORE’S SIGNATURE STONEWARE VESSELS. KNOW IT ALL CACTI HAVE DIFFERENT WATER NEEDS BASED ON THEIR GROWING AND DORMANT SEASONS. ABSORB ALL THE INFO YOU CAN BY READING THE NEW EDITION OF CACTUS STORE’S XEROPHILE (TEN SPEED PRESS). GROW UP DESERT PLANTS FEED OFF ROCKS, NOT DIRT, SO ORDINARY OFF-THE-SHELF POTTING SOIL WON’T DO THE TRICK. TRY STONE EATER’S, A MINERAL-RICH BLEND CRAFTED SPECIFICALLY FOR CACTI AND SUCCULENTS. FOR MORE SMART IDEAS VISIT ARCHDIGEST.COM/AD-IT-YOURSELF YE RIN MOK. ALL OTHERS COURTESY OF THE COMPANIES…

“We will never stop creating things that bring people together, that generate excitement. That’s a noble cause.”—Petrus Palmér, founder of Hem Preparing our February issue, the AD team was thinking about the power of design, landscape, and the built environment to challenge the status quo, stimulate the eye and the mind, and ultimately change the game. Surveying the many talents featured this month, it’s evident that each of them is profoundly radical in ways both large and small, dramatic and subtle, global and local. A house tour with Petrus Palmér, the founder of influential furniture company Hem (which global features director Sam Cochran describes in his story as “one of the buzziest brands to come out of Scandinavia since IKEA”), yields up plenty of inspiring words of wisdom along with a demonstration…

For more than a decade, fashion designer Rick Owens and his wife–slash–creative partner, Michèle Lamy, have been making furniture—first for themselves, then in limited editions for sale—most recently at a workshop in Saint-Fargeau-Ponthierry, about a 45-minute drive from their home in Paris. “I don’t adhere to a very cozy aesthetic,” admits Owens, whose unconventional runway shows might feature a one-legged, one-sleeved cashmere jumpsuit or a live human, worn as a backpack. “I like something a bit austere and unsentimental.” But when, in 2013, they designed what Owens calls a “brutalist Bauhaus recamier,” inspiration came from an old, more-frivolous-than-usual adage: “A lady never stands when she can sit and never sits when she can recline.” The bon mot (Owens thinks it was uttered by Mae West) spawned a perch with a decidedly cheerful…

From editor-in-chief Amy Astley and Architectural Digest, AD at 100 celebrates the most incredible homes of the past century, showcasing the work of top designers and offering rare looks inside the private worlds of artists, celebrities, and other fascinating personalities. Featuring Barack and Michelle Obama, Frank Gehry, Truman Capote, David Hockney, Marc Jacobs, Jennifer Aniston, Diana Vreeland, India Mahdavi, Peter Marino, Kelly Wearstler, Oscar Niemeyer, Axel Vervoordt, Frank Lloyd Wright, Elsie de Wolfe, Jacques Grange, Rose Tarlow, John Lautner, Renzo Mongiardino, and many more. abramsbooks.com/AD100…

It’s only fitting that a stucco eagle looms over the portico to the home of Alison Loehnis, an American powerhouse in London. “Actually it’s a very British eagle,” notes the fashion executive, president of Luxury and Fashion at Net-a-Porter, Mr Porter, and The Outnet. Two years ago, her family of four landed at the Georgian row house, set on a 19th-century garden square with ionic colonnades and aquiline statuettes. Attributed to Scottish landscape architect John Claudius Loudon, the residence is one of several allegedly built to house Wellington’s returning victorious officers. The homing instinct for the Loehnis family was also strong. Her husband, Alexander, who works in financial communications, grew up on the square and took Loehnis to see his childhood residence early in their relationship. “It was a tucked-away secret…

Trees have been a lifetime muse for the New York–based artist and designer Aaron Poritz. “This piece was made from a 200-year-old oak that fell in Connecticut,” he says of the sinuous stool on his worktable during a recent Zoom from his Brooklyn Navy Yard studio. But a run-of-the-mill woodworker he’s not. To achieve the amoeba-like form, he created a ceramic maquette, digitally scanned it, and programmed a robot to carve its three-dimensional contours (scaled up) from a timber hunk—all before sandblasting its surfaces for a rough-hewn finish. “I like to explore how textures can tie back to the original material,” he says of the final, hand-finished result, part of his upcoming solo show, “Big Woods,” at New York’s Cristina Grajales Gallery, opening January 27. Having grown up in Western Massachusetts…