A Bay Area landscape designer works her yard like a jigsaw puzzle, packing a bevy of distinctive destinations into a steep and diminutive plot. Until a few years ago, Loretta Gargan had spent her entire career as a landscape designer creating outdoor havens for other people, without a proper yard to call her own. But …
In this Brussels mansion, nothing has a price tag, but almost everything is for sale. Here, two design experts curate their fantasy house. In 2010, Ike Udechuku and Kathryn Smith moved into a neoclassical house in the Saint-Gilles district and set out to create what Udechuku calls “a gallery of the living experience.” Several times …
Both a gallery and a residence, an Antwerp home redefines the boundaries between public and private, art and interior design. Veerle Wenes has always been interested in hybrid creations, in the blending of disciplines. When she was invited in 2009 to cocurate an exhibition at Belgium’s Musée des Arts Contemporains, she opted to display “very …
Seeking a way to blend architecture into the natural environment, a pair of Ecuador-based designers invents a new modular building system. Prefab construction is often compared to building with Legos. In the case of the Pentimento House, located on the outskirts of Quito, the metaphor is unusually apt. Overlooking the Ilaló volcano and Andes mountain …
An airy addition on the back of a historic house in Boise is a model of sensitive renovation, seamlessly melding new and old. After nine years spent renting apartments in Boston and Chicago, Dan and Dana Zuckerman moved to Boise, Idaho, Dan’s hometown, in 2008. Drawn by the prospect of purchasing a historic home where …
Edmonton architect Vivian Manasc’s 19th-story rooftop penthouse is a bright spot—and a model green building—in a city where downtown living is rare. A 2011 visit to the New Cambridge Lofts building in Edmonton, Alberta, started out as purely business for architect Vivian Manasc. Her firm, Manasc Isaac Architects, had been hired to do a technical …
Knockoff furnishings may be cheap, but for the design industry, they come with a heavy price. Here’s how a designer makes money: One day she dreams up a chair. She spends months developing the concept, selecting materials, devising the exact curve of the arm, the dip of the back. Satisfied with the piece, she works …
On a walk through Ligne Roset’s factory near Lyon, France, we track the multitude of steps, hands, and hours required to craft this very refined couch. From the exterior, Ligne Roset’s complex in Briord, France, is little to look at, just workaday cement- and-metal factories near the base of the Alps. But once you step …
A Marmol Radziner–designed prefab house, trucked onto a remote Northern California site, takes the pain out of the construction process. Bill and Abbie Burton have experienced their share of construction drama. The Solana Beach, California– based landscape architects have been working together for 25 years, overhauling landscapes and buildings alike. So when the time came …
Architect Steve Bull designed a high-impact, low-maintenance home for a pair of intrepid clients in Alaska, but that was only the beginning of the adventure. Working as ER doctors at a hospital in eastern Anchorage, Alaska, Tanya Leinicke and Rick Navitsky are accustomed to high-pressure situations, like ministering to the aftereffects of moose stompings and …
