Architectural Digest April 2021

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“You can’t use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have.” —Maya Angelou The wise and hopeful words of Angelou are incredibly affirming and motivating in these trying times. In fact, her thought is reinforced by the many artistic souls featured in this issue, all of whom seem to drink from a bottomless well of ideas and invention in their work and in their homes. I hope that by now you have been dazzled by cover subject Daveed Diggs in Hamilton (Disney+ if you missed him on Broadway!) or his current turn in Snowpiercer on TNT. Diggs and his partner, actor Emmy Raver-Lampman, star of popular Netflix series The Umbrella Academy, bring the same spirit of joy and fun to their vibrant, happy new house in L.A. that they…

L ow, armless seats used for donning one’s shoes, slipper chairs emerged in the boudoirs of 18th-century Europe. And there they remained for hundreds of years, until the great American decorator Billy Baldwin dared to bring his short-legged, high-backed version out into the living room for all to behold. In the 1930s, while Baldwin was working for Manhattan decorator Ruby Ross Wood, the firm frequently used a large, armless chair that had been whittled down from the popular Lawson sofa, a square-backed, super-stuffed model developed at the turn of the 20th century for the home of Thomas W. Lawson, a noted Boston financier. Those originals appeared in many a Ruby Ross Wood Inc. project, but after Wood’s death in 1950, Baldwin reduced them to create a perch that had “the comfort of…

There’s nothing wrong with a cheery front hall, but I’ve always liked the unexpected.” Which explains the sludge-green that interior designer Courtnay Daniels painted across the entrance hall of the Manhattan apartment she shares with her husband, AD100 architect Gil Schafer. Yes, sludge-green, the same murky shade associated with poorly maintained goldfish bowls. Here the color was purposefully applied, wiped off, and polished with wax, over and over again over more than three weeks, resulting in a subtly swirling finish made up of “so many layers that I’ve lost count,” Daniels admits, adding that the laborious technique “gives a depth that you couldn’t get with mirrored lacquer.” Even before the couple got married, in 2018, she wanted to live in an old-school apartment that would comfort her two teenage children while…

LAFORTUNE: ANGIE STONG. SOTTSASS: GIANNI ANTONIALI. ALL OTHERS COURTESY OF THE COMPANIES.…

The architects Marion Weiss and Michael Manfredi are well known at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, where their curvilinear, green-roofed visitor center opened in 2012. Now they have transformed a sparsely planted hillside along the northern edge of the 52-acre garden into a spectacular overlook. Its spine is a switchback path, 680 feet long and perfectly wheelchair accessible, that at its highest point commands views of the garden’s Cherry Esplanade. “It’s a way to see the garden from above,” Manfredi says. It’s also a connector, making it possible for wheelchairs and strollers to bypass the monumental stairway that has dominated this axis of the garden for most of its history. By providing accessibility, the overlook “solves 110 years of unfinished business,” says the garden’s president, Adrian Benepe. The path, held in…