All I want for Christmas is a few days in this place… French industrial designer Matali Crasset‘s first forray into architecture – and, I think, her best work to date – the mood of the Dar HI eco retreat is perfection. I love the colours – both natural ones (especially the pink of the Tunisian earth) and the super strong ones (very much the Parisienne’s leitmotif).
A design objective often touted in architecture, the link between inside and outside space. This rebuilt house in rural Switzerland actually gets there, not by big openings alone but through a common palette of colours and materials.
There’s a lot to love about this house. The seriously sexy powder room builds to bathrooms with quite a different feel. But the opportunity to bring a touch of sensuality and delight to the ritual of the everyday isn’t missed here either.
I love the feel of this smart small hotel by Stuttgart architects, Naumann. Never folksy, but brimming with a big sense of place, and with just enough whimsy.
The new camping, Swedish style. I could definitely be persuaded.
This room has lots of the things I like in an interior. Black window frames, white walls, touches of orange… and it’s in Sicily. Siracusa to be exact and anyone who’s lucky enough to have been there (or dreams of going one day) might now close their eyes for a moment and imagine the view.
A sublimely detailed yet robust new house in South London features face brickwork and brass hardware reminiscent of both the 1970′s and Victorian traditions. I love the bare ceilings too, downlights banished in favour of strategically placed pendant lights, at least one of them in brass.
I love the slightly disarming effect of a diminutive desk towered over by an oversized floor lamp in the Venice flat of artist Anita Sieff. The contents of the house finely balanced between the essential/functional and the composed, the eye of the artist is everywhere to behold (right down to the fringed linen handtowel). And yet nothing – to my mind at least – looks the least contrived.
This new house on Lake Geneva looks surprisingly at home.
