Features
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Rooted Modernism
“We’ve hung onto a number of ideas over the years, chief of which is that place will always matter,” says architect Richard Fernau, one of two partners in the Berkeley-based firm of Fernau and Hartman Architects. “It’s been one of our touchstones.” Indeed, the work of Fernau and Laura Hartman draws on the deep-set traditions of the land and landscape…
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The Dream Factory of Alessi
Today, the Hollywood Dream Factories are long gone, but Alessi is thriving, with one eye still focused on function and the other on art and invention. Some of the greatest designers and architects of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, including EttoreSottsass, AchilleCastiglioni, Aldo Rossi, Michael Graves, Philippe Starck, Norman Foster, and Jasper Morrison have worked with the company. The president, Alberto Alessi, grandson of the founder, calls it “the dream factory.”
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Alessi at Home and Afield
Alberto Alessi had a dream. He wanted to be a vintner, but not just any kind of vintner. “My ambition is to do the best wine ever in Italy,” says the sixty-seven-year-old head of Alessi, SpA, the $130 million family company he has headed since 1970. He has transformed it from a staid producer of stainless steel housewares into a dynamic powerhouse driven solely by design…
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Spellbound
For any New York designer a project on a storied Fifth Avenue block in the Lenox Hill neighborhood formerly known as Millionaires’ Row would be a plum assignment, especially an apartment with breathtaking views of Central Park. But it was the Dublin-born New Yorker Carol Egan—known for bringing downtown verve to uptown residences…
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Crafting Collection
The striking concrete structure that is the Mint Museum Uptown is not only a cornerstone of Charlotte, North Carolina’s burgeoning arts scene, it is also home to “Craft and Design,” one of the country’s brightest new collections. Headed by Annie Carlano, Craft and Design is a division of the larger Mint Museum, which encompasses both the uptown museum and the original museum three miles away.
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The Stoller Mystique
Stoller was born in Chicago in 1915, took a degree in industrial design from NYU in 1938, and soon thereafter set about becoming one of the world’s first architectural photographers. Sometimes known as the “East Coast Julius Shulman,” a comparison to the better known photographer who recorded the history of California modernism, Stoller stayed in New York.
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West Side Story
“Even when I’m at the movies, I look at the furniture,” confesses Adriana Friedman, who, as director of the always-extraordinary New York design gallery DeLorenzo, spends a great deal of time looking at superb furniture and other excellent objects. She was introduced to design at the age of twenty-two, and it was, she says “love at first sight.”
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Czech and Baroque: Borek Šípek
Borek Šípek opens “A Baroque Soirée” at Industry Gallery in Washington, DC from September 8th to October 13th. For more information visit www.industrygallerydc.com.
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Design Dream
Francis Sultana has certainly made his mark in London—as a decorator, designer, artistic director, philanthropist, and more. He arrived there from Gozo, a small island in the Maltese archipelago, at age nineteen, took a three-month summer job at David Gill’s gallery, and never left. That was twenty years ago. Along the way, he’s produced his [...]
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Moroccan Majesty
Do you believe in love at first sight, a love that conquers all? If you do, the story of Christine and Aziz Alaoui and their remarkable seven-acre art deco Eden, Villa Bled Roknine—a three-story, ten-thousand- square-foot concrete and stone main house, plus guesthouse, water tower, and lush gardens, all created by Paul Sinoir for the [...]
