Table of contents for July-August 2018 in Architectural Digest

“This house signifies the next chapter of my life—as an adult, a woman, and a performer. I was able to pour all of who I am into making this place.”—Mandy Moore It seems fitting that we ring in the Fourth of July and this high-summer double issue of AD with a feature on a resuscitated and refreshed Pasadena house that our Mayer Rus aptly describes as “a declaration of independence.” Cover star Mandy Moore, a onetime teen idol, bought a “starter house” in 2002 at the tender age of 18 and admits that “it never felt wholly mine…. I never felt secure enough to bring a lot of people there.” Sixteen years later, Moore has a hit television show (This Is Us), a fiancé, and a spectacular new “old” place…

Half a century ago, inspired by the decorative patterns Jacques Arpels observed on his travels, Van Cleef & Arpels launched Alhambra—a clover-shaped gold medallion resembling a Moorish quatrefoil. “As an architectural element, it appears in almost every culture,” says Van Cleef & Arpels’s current president and CEO, Nicolas Bos. “In jewelry, it’s just as adaptable.” Today the French luxury brand remains captivated by the motif, having reimagined it in myriad styles and stones. This past May, to mark the Alhambra collection’s 50th anniversary, Van Cleef celebrated nine new pieces with a party at the 16th-century El Badi Palace in Marrakech. Among the introductions were a yellow-gold bracelet with rock-crystal quatrefoils and a diamond-encrusted necklace of rose gold and gray mother-of-pearl, the collective shimmer of which was matched only by the…

Standing in New Orleans’s Jackson Square and feeding pigeons cracked corn is one of Christopher Spitzmiller’s favorite childhood memories. “They would fly up and perch on your hand,” recalls the acclaimed ceramic artist, designer of must-have custom-made lamps and tableware. “It was better than Disney World.” At Clove Brook Farm, Spitzmiller’s home in New York’s Hudson Valley, that reminiscence has been reconstituted, thanks to the dovecote he recently constructed at the center of a parterre that brims, depending on the season, with tulips, sweet peas, and dahlias. It was modeled after the whimsical octagonal “martini houses” at P. Allen Smith’s Arkansas home—the garden guru is a longtime friend—and punctuates Spitzmiller’s landscape like an ornamental lantern. Recycled elements, such as vintage windows found on the side of a country road and…

Mary Ann Tighe will gladly tell you that she wasn’t to the manner born. “I’m a girl from the Bronx,” says the powerhouse New York commercial real-estate broker, who recently built a country manor dubbed Hollyhock with her husband, Dr. David Hidalgo, on four acres near the ocean in Southampton, New York. Located on the site of a former estate known as Red Maples, the new house has historical antecedents: The stucco exterior and Mission-tile roof allude to the original 1908 villa that was razed in the 1940s; the signature interior features were inspired by the iconic mansions that architect David Adler built in Chicago’s lakefront suburbs in the 1920s and 1930s. Sitting in the 55-foot-long, three-bay, pine-paneled library that was inspired by an Adler design, Tighe pulls out books…

As we squelch round her sodden six acres of garden, Lady Tania Compton exclaims, “I love being on clay!” Even though, I ask, it’s awash in winter, is backbreaking to dig, and, come summer, dries to the consistency of concrete? “Totally,” she says. “It’s wonderful!” She’s not joking. Compton—the most successful British landscape designer few have ever heard of—approaches her work with what can only be described as gusto, but that’s just the half of it. Her ebullient attitude is backed up by an encyclopedic knowledge and a willingness to defy conventional wisdom, as in the silver garden that leads to the door of Spilsbury, her house in Wiltshire. Filled with the kinds of Mediterranean plants that drew her into the profession in the first place, the garden entrance gets…

SINCE OPENING IN 1900, Boston’s Emerson Colonial Theatre has launched some of America’s most-beloved musicals, from Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Oklahoma! to Sondheim’s Follies. And for decades it had an interior to match. Conceived by architect Clarence H. Blackall and designer Henry Barrett Pennell, the theater brought the best of Baroque Europe under one roof, reproducing elements of Versailles and the Louvre. But by the time Ambassador Theatre Group (ATG) won its management in 2017, trend-based renovations had altered Blackall’s intent. “We had to revive that feeling of grandeur,” reflects David Manfredi of Elkus Manfredi Architects, which collaborated with ATG and a team of artisans on a two-year restoration. The results debuted June 27 with the premiere of Moulin Rouge! The Musical. Orchestra seating was replaced, carpet custom-made, gilding refreshed,…

Even in a town as youth-obsessed as Hollywood, a little maturity has its own compensations. Just ask Mandy Moore. The star of the NBC family drama This Is Us rose to fame as a singer in 1999, at the tender age of 15, with her debut single, “Candy.” She played her first starring role on the big screen in A Walk to Remember in 2002. That same year Moore bought a “starter” home, a five-bedroom Mediterranean-style spread in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Los Feliz. “I lived there for 15 years, and even though the house went through several iterations, it never felt wholly mine,” she says. “I bought it when I was 18. I really didn’t know myself, and I never felt secure enough to bring a lot of…

“In terms of decorating, we wanted to enhance the architecture because it’s so strong,”Bunny Williams notes. “Wonderful chintz can be hard to find these days,” Williams observes. “It’s ready for a comeback.”…

One might reasonably expect an architect’s own house to make a statement, and on that account the home that Ron Radziner designed for himself, his wife, graphic-and-jewelry designer Robin Cottle, and their children, Asher and Lexi, does not disappoint. Situated on a wooded parcel in Los Angeles’s Mandeville Canyon, the structure declares its principles sotto voce: simplicity of line, economy of form, clarity of materials, harmony with nature. It’s a message familiar to anyone who has followed the work of Marmol Radziner, the design/build firm Radziner founded with Leo Marmol in 1989, which is renowned for both stellar restorations of important modernist houses and finely detailed contemporary creations. “The parti for any architectural design is dictated by the site. Yes, Robin and I discussed the rooms we needed, how we…

When the design studio Charlap Hyman & Herrero approached Patterson Flynn Martin last year, all they had in mind was a single rug for a residential project. But Dara Caponigro—creative director of F. Schumacher & Co., the carpet company’s parent brand—loved the young firm’s energy and asked for more. What was originally meant to be a capsule collection quickly expanded into seven rugs and seven wallpaper patterns, three available as fabrics. “We got to do so many things,” exclaims Adam Charlap Hyman, who cofounded the interdisciplinary studio with Andre Herrero in 2014. (Adam’s younger brother, Alexander, joined their ranks a year later.) Adds Adam, still in a state of disbelief: “It was crazy.” We’d call it shrewd on Schumacher’s part. Wise beyond their 20­-something years, Adam, Andre, and Alexander have…

FOR NEARLY 30 YEARS the Florence-based photographer Massimo Listri has had his nose in a book, traveling throughout Europe—and beyond—to document some of the most extraordinary libraries. In Dublin, he visited the barrel-vaulted Long Room at Trinity College, home to 200,000-plus rare volumes, among them the Book of Kells; in Rome, he documented the sprawling Vatican Apostolic Library, with its epic corridors, lavish frescoes, and ornate floors; and in Bavaria, he snapped the shelves at Metten Abbey, a baroque stunner adorned by wedding-cake carvings. These extraordinary places and many, many more appear in Listri’s new tome The World’s Most Beautiful Libraries (Taschen, $200), a must have for bibliophiles, architecture lovers, and armchair travelers alike.…

In March, DIFFA: Design Industries Foundation Fighting AIDS hosted its signature fundraiser DINING BY DESIGN raising more than $700,000 toward its grant-making efforts to HIV/AIDS organizations nationwide. The 2018 event brought together more than 40,000 guests to experience an array of themed dining installations by more than 30 designers, architects, manufacturers, and brands. Participants had two days to transform a 30,000-square-foot space into an immersive installation, infusing bold colors, eye-catching materials, and powerful messaging into their individual dining vignettes. CO-LOCATED WITH THE GENEROUS SUPPORT OF FOR MORE INFORMATION VISIT DIFFA.ORG…

“We gravitate toward people who really engage and want to create something authentic to how they live.”—Martin Finio it’s 8 p.m. on Shelter Island, and for Vivian and William Antrim, ages six and three, that means bedtime. But first, a dance party. “One song,” warns their father, Taylor, cuing the music. Tiny fists start pumping and little hips begin to shake as the kids recognize a favorite tune—Kelly Clarkson’s “Since U Been Gone.” “Thanks to youuu, now I gettt, what I wannnt,” Vivian bellows, sashaying across the broad window seat, her podium for the evening. Taylor and his wife, Liz Twitchell, didn’t have a stage in mind when they decided to build in this mellow community, tucked between Long Island’s North and South Forks. But in many ways their house…