Architectural Digest June 2021

strokes of genius

At their home in New York’s Hudson Valley (page 58), Mary Nelson Sinclair and Matty Cruise enlisted a fellow artist, their friend Happy Menocal, to create a one-of-a-kind mural for the guest room. Over the course of a weekend visit, the illustrator enlivened the walls with exuberant botanicals and, along the molding, a whimsical dotted border. The site-specific work is just one of many ways that paint helped to transform this 18th-century house from floor to ceiling…. FOR MORE SMART IDEAS, VISIT @GETCLEVER ON INSTAGRAM OR ARCHDIGEST.COM/CLEVER PHOTO BY GIEVES ANDERSON. © 2021 AGNES MARTIN / ARTISTS RIGHTS SOCIETY (ARS), NEW YORK.…

editor’s letter

“If the world around you isn’t in order, it’s hard to get your brain in order. When we’re in our home, the world just makes sense.” —Ashton Kutcher It took a bit of coaxing to persuade our cover couple, Ashton Kutcher and Mila Kunis, to open the doors of their sustainable, solar-powered, cornfield-planted, six-acre Los Angeles property—cutely dubbed KuKu Farms—to AD. But once the determinedly private pair agreed, they really opened up about their painstaking process to West Coast Editor Mayer Rus, who describes them as “design-obsessed.” For their five-year passion project, a home that Kutcher imagined would “look like an old barn, something that had been here for decades, but also feel modern and relevant,” the Hollywood power duo chose two AD100 talents: architect Howard Backen and interior designer Vicky…

easy does it

Architect Gio Ponti understood the hard truth about clients. “[It’s] the person without whom one cannot produce architecture, and with whom one cannot produce it either,” he once quipped, quoting a friend. But in Anala and Armando Planchart, the Italian star found an anomaly: patrons willing to let him build a house that he poetically described as “a large butterfly alighted on the hilltop.” Completed in 1957, Villa Planchart, perched on a rise as he imagined, overlooking Caracas, is a Gesamtkunstwerk of Ponti’s innovative ideas for lighting, tableware, and, of course, furniture. “Simplicity in production, simplicity of assembly and disassembly, simplicity of packaging” is how photographer and curator Salvatore Licitra—the maestro of Taschen’s new book Gio Ponti—explains his grandfather’s postwar aesthetic. Proof is the Round chair that Ponti used at Villa…

greener pastures

On a bright morning in upstate New York, an engaging toddler named Mary Augustine Cruise is making eggs—over easy. Mid-flip, the frying pan clatters to the floor, though thankfully the yolks in question are of the wooden variety, as is the miniature stovetop. Her mother, painter Mary Nelson Sinclair, has meanwhile just pulled scones out of the life-size La Cornue oven, plating them on vintage faience dishes before hand-whipping cream to accompany them. Beside the farm table, Pippa, the family’s Yorkshire terrier, perches on a camelback loveseat, waiting patiently for any crumbs to fall. It was the kitchen that underwent the most dramatic transformation a few years back, when Sinclair and her husband, sculptor Matty Cruise, set about renovating their 18th-century Colonial farmhouse in a quiet hamlet of Columbia County. The…

natural beauty

As spring turns to summer, long days and warm weather bring us closer to Mother Nature. Benjamin Moore’s exceptional paint colors help to keep the outdoors inside year-round. Capture the horizon’s azure tones with Little Boy Blue 2061-60, an upbeat pastel from the Color Preview Collection of homeowner favorites. It goes perfectly with Dorset Gold HC-8, an earthy yellow that calls to mind the muted light of a late June evening. Together these two versatile hues make for a vivid celebration of sun and sky. Shop paint samples now at store.benjaminmoore.com PRODUCED FOR © 2021 ESTATE OF AGNES MARTIN / ARTISTS RIGHTS SOCIETY (ARS), NEW YORK.…

group dynamic

Carmen D’Apollonio often works solo, but she never gets lonely in her Los Angeles studio, where she’s surrounded by ceramic lamps and vessels in progress, many of them people-size. “They become a bit human,” she says of her inanimate companions—some of them anthropomorphic, others vaguely figurative. “They’re like a little family.” Soon she’ll bid the gang farewell as pieces big and small get boxed up and shipped out to New York City, where they’ll star in her first U.S. solo exhibition, “Don’t Wake the Snake,” opening July 15 at Friedman Benda gallery. D’Apollonio’s ceramics practice began eight years ago, when she signed up for an introductory course in traditional Japanese raku pottery in her native Switzerland. After relocating to L.A. in 2014, she landed a high-profile commission: The French fashion brand…