Once known for its “treasure hunt” atmosphere, colorful home furnishings, and distinctive holiday decorations, Pier 1 filed for bankruptcy in February 2020.
Pier 1 later announced it was winding down its entire business, in part, due to the coronavirus pandemic. And while Pier 1 had a smaller share of the home furnishing industry than some of its rivals, those store closings could mean good news for a few retailers.
See how since buying the house with his wife, managing director of creative agency Winkreative, Ariel Childs, 20 years ago, Paul de Zwart has transformed a 17th-century cottage into a refined take on the English country house idiom, with interiors that bear the mark of the couple’s desire for contemporary country living, where wellies are as at home as a cocktail shaker.
London-based entrepreneur Paul de Zwart crystallized the concept for his fledgling furniture company, Another Country, while searching for some simple bedside tables and stools for his country house. “I realized there was a dearth of well-made, well-priced design with a modern craft heritage,” he says. His solution? An affordable line of pared-down pieces that are handmade in England from sustainable woods. “We’re going for timeless over trendy.”
One of the major advantages of shipping container homes is that they can be constructed off site and transported to remote locations. That’s exactly what has happened with this spectacular home which has been built using a 40ft shipping container. Situated in the hills overlooking the ocean and with mountain views of the South Island in New Zealand, this home is simply breathtaking. It’s remote location has meant that off-the-grid living is essential and the home is powered by an impressive solar system.
In the heart of Moltrasio, a town on the shores of Lake Como, there is this intimate and luxurious estate with a panoramic view of the lake’s landscape for sale.
Moltrasio is a comune in the Province of Como in the Italian region Lombardy, located about 45 kilometres north of Milan and about 6 kilometres north of Como, near the border with Switzerland, on the western shore of Lake Como.
Today AD brings you to Vail, Colorado to tour 165 Forest Avenue, a massive ultra-modern 
mansion nestled in the Rocky Mountains. From the linear fireplace in the living room, to Italian marble surfaces in the kitchen, each space in the home is an invigorating expression of timeless luxury. The interior elegance is only surpassed by the natural beauty seen through the home’s glass walls, which slide apart granting access to over 6,500 sq. ft. of heated exterior space.
Last year, architect Adam Richards revealed Nithurst Farm, his self-designed family home in the South Downs National Park. We’re pleased to share a new film exploring the far-reaching ideas and references that informed the convention-defying design of the house, as well as the intimate realities of daily life in the space, one year on.
Head of his namesake practice, based in Sussex and London, Richards oversees his studio’s work on residential and cultural projects that have most notably included the Ditchling Museum of Art + Craft and the Gardens Learning Centre and Café at Walmer Castle. The handling of such buildings by ARA is one they define as an approach that seeks ‘to transform the deeper themes within its projects into engaging critical, spatial, social and structural propositions.’ This often translates to an engagement with the historical context of a site, so that an extension to a neo-classical Georgian townhouse in Notting Hill takes the form of an abstracted Greek temple, or a refurb to Arundel Lido is informed by a nearby Roman villa.
When it came to designing his own home, Richards had the freedom of a blank page. The brief was to create a new-build home for him and his family on a site at the bottom of a valley, surrounded by the woodlands and farmland of West Sussex. With creative freedom came the incorporation of seemingly disparate sources of inspiration, everything from the cinematic tactility of Andrei Tarkovsky’s 1979 Soviet art house hit, Stalker, to the classical plan of Andrea Palladio’s Renaissance masterpiece, Villa Barbaro, and Robert Mangold’s 1970s minimalist work of geometric abstractions. The resulting building is one that plays with time, style and detail in surprising and unexpected ways, to appear as a “Roman ruin wrapped around a modern concrete house,” according to Richards.
From an Oakland warehouse, startup company Mighty Buildings constructs prefab homes with their Big-G Printer, a 20-foot-tall 3D printer that, at speeds of 120 millimeters per second, can print a 350-square-foot studio in less than 24 hours. The homes are made of Light Stone, a thermoset composite material that hardens when exposed to UV light.
Instead of 3D printing sections of each home for on-site assembly, the machine maximizes cost savings by printing the home’s entire structural shell—thus automating the building process by up to 80% with cost savings of 20% to 30% compared to traditional prefab methods.
A linear red-brick wall obscures the textured interiors and art-filled courtyard hidden inside McLean Quinlan’s low-rise Passivhaus home in Devon, UK. The energy-efficient dwelling, aptly named Devon Passivhaus, nestles into a sloped walled garden that was once owned by an old English country house that fell into a state of disrepair.
The overall design is simple and clean. An elegant brick front complements the brickwork of the old garden wall and a discrete front door opening references the gate in the garden wall. Further down, an oriel window breaks through, hinting at what is behind. Elsewhere, external surfaces are dark render, designed to recede visually in deference to the surrounding garden.
Tucked within, the house has a glass roofed courtyard at its centre, a winter garden flooding light into the interior. Spaces are arranged around this central core so the building functions both as a home and a gallery for our clients, great collectors of pottery and art, with spaces to display and curate.
Comfortable and serene interior spaces are punctuated with tactile and textured materials: reclaimed terracotta, rough sawn oak and clay plaster, to ensure that internally the building feels connected to the garden that inspired it.
Life Meets Art is an unparalleled behind-the-scenes tour of some of the most fascinating, inspirational and unique home interiors in the world. The living spaces of hundreds of the globe’s most talented people in the spheres of art, design, fashion, literature, music, and film, here provide inspiration for anyone fascinated by stylish living, creative interior design and the myriad possibilities for home decor. It’s a fascinating glimpse into the homes of some of the greatest creatives in history — painters, sculptors, novelists, poets, fashion designers, composers, musicians, architects, and more.
AUTHOR: Sam Lubell has written eight books about architecture, including California Captured and two travel guides to mid-century modern architecture in the USA, all from Phaidon. He is a contributing editor at The Architect’s Newspaper and writes for the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, The Atlantic, Architectural Record, Architectural Review, and other publications.
Nestled on the rocky cliffs of Positano, this 170-sqm seafront villa offers two bedrooms with terraces and a beautiful view over the historic center of Positano, the Fornillo beach and Li Galli archipelago. Through a 400-step staircase, or via an elevator, one can easily reach the underlying sea. The villa also boasts a private parking spot, a unique and sought feature in Positano.
Positano is a cliffside village on southern Italy’s Amalfi Coast. It’s a well-known holiday destination with a pebble beachfront and steep, narrow streets lined with boutiques and cafes. Its Chiesa di Santa Maria Assunta features a majolica-tiled dome and a 13th-century Byzantine icon of the Virgin Mary. The Sentiero degli Dei hiking trail links Positano to other coastal towns.
