This Home Serves As A Peaceful Sanctuary In The Czech Republic

Looking for a home to renovate outside of Prague, architect Jan Žaloudek and his wife, Jolanta Trojak, an art historian and writer, stumbled upon an exceptional plot of land where they could build one instead. The culturally protected parcel, located in Kamenná Lhota, Czech Republic, a tiny village about an hour’s drive southeast of the city, was once the garden of the neighboring baroque château, where famed violinist Oskar Nedbal composed his operetta Polska Krev in 1913. They immediately fell in love with the site. “We were captivated by the centuries-old trees, the crumbling stone border wall, the countryside views, and the favorable orientation,” Žaloudek recalls.

In dreaming up the creative couple’s longed-for refuge, Žaloudek abided by his philosophy that a home should be a temple for living. Accordingly, the structure, nicknamed Oskar House, was inspired by chapels. “My goal,” he explains, “was to create a space with a sacred atmosphere that could vary according to the mood of the moment—a space in which it’s possible to gaze into the landscape one minute, and, in the next, cocoon yourself in a closed, meditative environment animated by light and shadow play.”

Jan Žaloudek Dreams Up A Meditative Home In Czech Republic

The compact 1,660-square-foot two-bedroom is defined by its gabled form, drawn from the local vernacular, and its perforated facades. Circular and quatrefoil-shape punctures in the masonry structure and the ground-floor sun shutters invite ventilation and cast what Žaloudek describes as “lacelike shadows” on the concrete floors. Folding open the spruce-and-fir shutters, which line all four sides of the house, allows the interiors to switch between an open and closed posture; aluminum-framed glass sliders forge further connection to the elements.

The decor reflects the duo’s shared interest in fine art and a contemplative approach to living, with furniture and artwork thoughtfully curated to create spaces that feel at once ecclesiastical and gallerylike. The heart of the home is the double-height open-plan living/dining area, its gable marked by a 6 ½-foot-wide circular window. Here, contemporary furnishings pair with vintage objects, such as a Gabonese ceremonial mask and a 19th-century carved-wood Madonna. Echoing an altar, a vaulted niche backdrops the kitchen, with an island clad in Shivakashi granite from India. And in the main bedroom suite, also on the ground floor, an ash bed and black-granite nightstands by Žaloudek complement a 19th-century Japanese folding screen and a large-scale contemporary canvas by Czech painter Antonie Stanová.

Žaloudek conceived the second level as its own self-contained guest apartment. It’s an inward-facing contrast to the open lower level, a skylit retreat where sculptures by Vanda Hvízdalová rest on travertine pedestals. A staircase leads up from the sleeping area to a mezzanine study. “Each part of the house has a different purpose and atmosphere,” Žaloudek explains. “When you’re craving privacy, you can shut yourself away with a book in the study. Or, if you want to connect with the world, you open the downstairs shutters, and you’ll hardly know where the house ends and the landscape begins.”

Walk Through This Charming Home By Jan Žaloudek In The Countryside

PROJECT SOURCES FROM FRONT NORR11: TABLE, CHAIRS (DINING AREA), LARGE COCKTAIL TABLE (LIVING AREA), CHAIR (STUDY), STOOLS (KITCHEN). HAY: SOFA (LIVING AREA). CAPPELEN DIMYR: TAPESTRY. SYNESTÉ: SMALL COCKTAIL TABLE. MICHAL JANIGA: STOOL (LIVING AREA), TEA TABLE (MAIN BEDROOM). FERM LIVING: PENDANT FIXTURES (LIVING AREA), MIRROR (BATHROOM). BEGA: PENDANT FIX­TURES (KITCHEN, BATHROOM). TALKA DECOR: MARBLE PILLAR (GUEST BED­ROOM), SINK (BATHROOM). MARSET: SCONCES (MAIN BEDROOM). THROUGHOUT JOLANTA TROJAK: ART CONSULTANT. ATELIER ROUGE: LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE. PROJEKTY S+S: CONSTRUCTION.

8 Designers Making Waves In The World Of Bath Design

From sleek stone slabs to an amorphous birch mirror, see how these trailblazing designers are shaking up the bath and spa scene.

Creativity Shines In These Bath Designs

Konstantin Grcic for Laufen

Product: Val Luminex.
Standout: Translucent cast Santec, a mineral-based material, forms the German designer’s heat-retaining freestanding tub for Laufen, which offers nine standard settings plus remote-controlled colors and LED light effects.

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Antonio Citterio for Duravit

Product: Aurena.
Standout: The designer/architect’s dual vanity for Duravit comprises an aluminum console with integrated towel bars, open storage alongside centered drawers, and ceramic sinks treated with an easy-clean hygienic glaze.

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Daniel Arsham for Kohler

Product: Landshapes.
Standout: A comprehensive collection by the artist for Kohler includes droplet-inspired vitreous-china vessel sinks, wall-mount faucets with glass handles, an amorphous birch-framed mirror, draped-glass sconces, and recycled-material tiles.

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Fabio Calvi and Paolo Brambilla for QuadroDesign

Product: Super.
Standout: Calvi Brambilia introduces a minimalist tapware collection for QuadroDesign, in brushed stainless steel, that features a showerhead with a distinctive ergonomic “squircle” shape and anti-limescale nozzles.

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Vanessa DeLeon for Neolith

Product: The Vanessa DeLeon Edit.
Standout: The interior designer and TV personality curates her favorites from the Neolith brand, including the uber-realistic marble-effect San Simone and Niagara sintered-stone slabs.

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Michelle Gerson for Artistic Tile

Product: Slide.
Standout: Honed Azul Cielo, Ming Classico, and Rosa Portogallo marbles plus Vanilla onyx and Lilac stone slip-slide on a Bianco Dolomiti marble ground in the New York designer’s softly colorful waterjet-cut mosaic for Artistic Tile.

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Glenn Pushelberg and George Yabu for SV Casa

Product: Ishi.
Standout: Upscale bath accessories by the Yabu Pushelberg cofounders for SV Casa include handy stone catchalls, a tissue box and trash can in PU leather, and a refined bronze-finished stainless-steel soap dish.

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Ruan Hoffman for L’Objet

Product: Ruan Hoffmann bowl.
Standout: Crafted in Portugal, the South African artist’s humble earthenware bowl for L’Objet has a swirling, blue-patterned interior that sharply contrasts with its luxe 24-karat gold exterior.

Glimpse A Star-Studded Rug Collab With A Twist

Heard of plumasserie? It’s the centuries-old craft of hand-applying feathers that was once the stock-in-trade of haute couture houses. Maison Février, the last feather atelier located in the heart of Paris, teamed up with Milanese rug company Illulian and Argentine designer/architect Daniel Germani on a cross-disciplinary project to highlight the ebbing art. Plumaria is the outcome: an irregularly shaped rug in carved white Himalayan wool that becomes the canvas from which frothy feathers spring—the plumes all carefully selected and hand-applied by Maison Février artisans. The quills’ mélange of greens is accented by hints of red, resembling a living wall of tropical foliage. It’s a true tribute to nature and to craft.

Accessorize The Walls With Jeffrey Renz’s Clasp Mirror

Spotted on the streets of SoHo during New York Fashion Week: the accessory of the moment, Clasp. Available in a polished-chrome or matte-black finish, the cast-iron frame, er, mirrors the detailing of a handbag’s metal clasp. Measuring 32 inches high and 20 wide, the looking glass is the latest from Jeffrey Renz and his Brooklyn-based line, Ready to Hang: fun, design-forward mirrors sold at accessible prices, the name a play on ready-to-wear. “We intend to blur the line between fashion and home,” Renz says. Clasp is a case in point.

Vera Wang’s Sleek HQ Redefines Fashion With Minimalist Elegance

While other septuagenarians who have had long, successful careers are packing it in, Vera Wang, 75, is making a fresh start. The fashion designer recently sold her namesake company to brand management firm WHP Global in an arrangement that allows her to continue as chief creative officer while being a shareholder in her label as well as in the larger company. Additionally, she and her team have relocated to a polished New York headquarters from which she can oversee the company she founded 35 years ago. What began as bridal wear has grown into a lifestyle brand with licenses for jewelry, home goods, and more, along with designing annual ready-to-wear lines as well as red-carpet looks for the likes of Ariana Grande and Lady Gaga. “It’s a new chapter,” Wang begins. 

Her previous office was on 26th Street, but changes planned for the building she was renting in prompted her to look elsewhere. It was time to move anyway. Her business had evolved from one devoted to producing clothes to one focused on licensing, so she no longer needed thousands of square feet for functions like shipping and receiving. What she needed, instead, was a flexible workplace where she could shoot content to support licensees with a voracious appetite for Instagram posts. An avowed minimalist, Wang was also ready to graduate from a space that was so stripped down as to be “severe” to “something more glamorous,” she continues. Interestingly, to help bring this evolution to fruition, Wang turned to BMA Architects, a firm more defined by luxury residential than workplace. 

Inside Vera Wang’s Luxe Manhattan HQ

The real estate search led Wang to a building that had its own whiff of glamour: the Mad Men–era Pepsi-Cola Building, an aluminum-and-glass landmark on 59th Street completed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill in 1960. She took 17,000 square feet on the fifth and seventh floors, the former devoted to workplace, the latter for bridal sales, alterations, and VIP fittings. For Wang, a native New Yorker whose first bridal salon was in the Carlyle hotel, moving back uptown was “a full-circle moment,” she notes.

Concepting the interiors was a journey as well. Creating a new workplace “was as personal as building a home,” Wang recalls, so it was perhaps not surprising that she found herself drawn to photos of modernist houses—and their proportion, mix of materials, and warmth—by BMA founder Blaze Makoid. Even though he’d only designed a handful of commercial offices, she arranged to meet him, and they hit it off. Makoid immediately got Wang’s spare, black-and-white aesthetic. They talked about rooting the project in the four elements of Chinese philosophy: water, wood, steel, and fire (Wang’s parents had immigrated from China in the 1940’s). It also helped that a staff member pulled Makoid aside and gave him a tip: “Vera hates anything round.” 

A Black-And-White Palette For Vera Wang

That’s clear the moment visitors enter reception today and encounter a rectilinear jet black–stone fountain, its water generating a soft hush that makes the street traffic fade away. The design of the feature came easily to Makoid, who has done countless infinity pools for his residential clients, but there were plumbing challenges: “We knew the detailing required to make the water flow over the edge in a way that almost had no movement,” Makoid explains. “But what was complicated was to determine how to get the water there and out.” Behind the fountain is a video wall composed of dozens of screens: On a normal workday, the Vera Wang logo is lit up in a sea of black, but, during an event, the wall can project mood-setting imagery. A luminous desk of backlit Cristallo quartzite and frost-white large-format porcelain floor tile yield a sort of chiaroscuro effect to the entry space.

The center of the workplace is the design and photo studio, where there is a video wall even larger than the one in reception. Composed of more than 125 screens attached to 10 subframes, it can be programmed to function as a digital version of the mood boards designers have made for decades by pinning polaroids to bulletin boards, or project all the items in a collection, or provide a backdrop for a photo shoot. “That space was probably more important to Vera than her actual office,” Makoid says. 

It’s All About Fashion At This Minimalist Office

But her corner office is no slouch either, encompassing the clean-lined profiles and contrasting-color theme found throughout the project. A crisp white sofa by Vincent Van Duysen, a low coffee table in black-tinted glass, and ecru woven-leather chairs by Gordon Guillaumier that Wang had in her Los Angeles home all stand on ebony nylon broadloom. “The furniture kept getting boiled down to the most minimal geometric,” Makoid says with a laugh. Elsewhere, sleek task seating by Burkhard Vogtherr and Antonio Citterio in the studio and open office area are on castors for flexibility; chairs in the waiting area off reception “appear almost like stick drawings of furniture,” Makoid adds. 

They reappear in the café, its intimate size and sculptural backlit bar—“I’ve never built a bar in an office before,” Wang marvels—emitting both residential and hospitality notes. It’s also geared toward flexibility and multifunction: able to host a cocktail party, a one-on-one meeting, or just an employee wanting to take a pause. Instead of doors, the café is fitted with tall pivoting panels in black-stained white oak that can open “the whole reception area into one big show space for an event,” Makoid says.

The panels were too large to fit in the freight elevator and had to be carried up five flights. But the effort has paid off. The office “aesthetically speaks to what Vera values,” Makoid says. Wang concurs: “It reflects the mood we’re trying to iterate with the brand,” she concludes. “I feel an energy we didn’t have before,” sounding ready for years more of creative effort herself.

Vera Wang’s Office Makes A Bold Statement

An Office With A Style That Turns Heads

BMA ARCHITECTS: MATTHEW LABRAKE; CHARLOTTE KALARIS; ELIRA CONDE. SPECTORGROUP: ARCHITECT OF RECORD. ALLERTONFOX CONSTRUCTION: GENERAL CONTRACTOR. 

FROM FRONT MOLTENI&C: SOFA (WANG OFFICE). ACERBIS: TABLE. CAPPELLINI: CHAIRS (RECEPTION, CAFÉ). PEDRALI: TABLE (RECEPTION). DAVIS FURNITURE: CHAIRS (PHOTO STUDIO). HERMAN MILLER: TABLES. VITRA: CHAIRS (EXECUTIVE OFFICE, OPEN OFFICE). ROOM & BOARD: STOOLS (CAFÉ). ANDREU WORLD: TABLES. INNOVANT: WORKSTATIONS (OPEN OFFICE). THROUGHOUT COMMODITILE: FLOOR TILE. PATCRAFT: CARPET. BENJAMIN MOORE & CO.: PAINT.

Canvas To Carat: The Hidden Jewelry Talents Of Iconic Artists

French collector Diane Venet counts his visagelike Le Grand Faune pendant among her 220-piece trove of artist-made bijouterie. It turns out, several painters and sculptors shared this hobby. Pairings of their accessories and artworks in their respective mediums compose “Artists’ Jewelry: From Cubism to Pop, the Diane Venet Collection,” at the Norton Museum of Art in Palm Beach, Florida, through October 5. Among the ap­prox­imately 250 pieces is Alexander Calder’s primary-colored Spirales tapestry, which is joined by a belt buckle he designed, Lynda Benglis’s Cocoon wall sculpture, shown alongside a silver pin she crafted, and Niki de Saint Phalle’s voluptuous Nana figure, displayed with her Nana Ange brooch. Picasso’s pendant also appears, as does Venet’s coiled silver wedding ring, made by her sculptor husband Bernar, in lieu of a diamond.

Thomas Phifer Designs The Museum of Modern Art Warsaw

Celebrated architect Thomas Phifer has worked on dozens of cultural institutions across the U.S., most notably completing expansions to the Glenstone in Potomac, Maryland, and the Corning Museum of Glass in New York, plus myriad residential commissions. But he hasn’t done a project in Europe. Until now, when Thomas Phifer and Partners has designed not one but two buildings in Poland: the Museum of Modern Art Warsaw and the TR Warszawa Theatre. The former has just bowed, marking not only a milestone for Phifer but also for the museum, or MSN (the Polish acronym for Muzeum Sztuki Nowoczesnej), which hasn’t had a permanent home since its founding in 2005.

And what a home it is. The three-story structure is on Plac Defilad, the largest public square in Europe. Beyond its facade of crisp-white architectural cast-in-place concrete, the 213,000-square-foot interior features a series of “city rooms,” their expansive windows overlooking the plac, and a monumental staircase connecting all the galleries. Those are now installed with “The Impermanent: Four Takes on the Collection,” the MSN’s inaugural exhibition drawn from its 4,300-plus holdings, which spans pieces from the 1950’s to today,  focusing on how artists have interpreted modernism and its political, economic, and creative implications and revealing the changes across the visual arts in the last seven decades. “The galleries serve as catalysts for Warsaw’s cultural renaissance,” Phifer says. “We imagined the building as a vitrine of light, not only a museum but also a town hall where Varsovians and visitors can participate in the life of the city.”

Inside The Museum of Modern Art Warsaw

Acoustic Panels Get A Colorful Makeover In This Punchy Collab

“At age five or six, my favorite pink carpet was replaced by gray flooring, and I remember how the room’s energy died,” Tekla Severin (aka Teklan) recalls. “It was the first time I unconsciously understood what color and texture could do for a space. Later, I recreated that pink carpet in my bedroom.” So began Teklan’s now illustrious career as a photographer and designer who specializes in chromatic play. The Swedish colorist’s latest collaboration is “A Box Within a Box,” a Stockholm Furniture Fair booth for Elettra de Pellegrin’s acoustic-products company, Slalom. “I wanted to balance the more neutral tones of Slalom’s acoustic panels, such as Bloom and Woody, with my typically bold approach to color,” Teklan says. “I focused on creating that magical intersection between two- and three-dimensional perceptions, working with layers, drawing inspiration from labyrinths and tiles.” She also designed a brand-new pattern for the company: Arlecchino, a printed felt alternating sky-blue diamonds with mustard-and-black-striped ones.

Explore A Vibrant Photo Exhibit At Villa Medici In Rome

Italy is a hotbed of creativity every spring, thanks to the Salone de Mobile in Milan and the Biennale di Venezia in Venice. This year, fairgoers may want to add a stop in Rome for “Chromotherapia: The Feel-Good Color Photography” at Villa Medici. According to the American Medical Association, it may even be healthy for them to do so, as color can impact mood, cognitive function, anxiety levels, and overall psychological well-being. Indeed, even just a gander at the rich reds in images by Martin Parr and William Wegman, who are among the 19 artists featured in the exhibition showcasing more than 200 works categorized into seven “chapters,” can energize and stimulate, while Adrienne Raquel’s petal pink and crisp white have a more clarifying affect. The show is cocurated by Villa Medici director Sam Stourdzé and artist Maurizio Cattelan, the latter also con­tributing a photograph created with Pierpaolo Ferrari, cofounder of the magazine Toiletpaper. Fittingly, the subject is covered in spaghetti.

In Bloom: Flowers Take Center Stage In A London Exhibit

With spring upon the northern hemisphere, floral-themed exhibitions are abloom in the U.S. and Europe. In “The Orchid Show: Mexican Modernism” at New York Botanical Garden, for example, thousands of the tropical specimens cluster around vivid partitions inspired by Luis Barragán; at Denver Botanic Gardens, “Finding Light” features Anna Kaye’s charcoal depictions of forest plants regrowing after a wildfire.

Perhaps the most extensive of these shows is “Flowers–Flora in Contemporary Art & Culture” at Saatchi Gallery in London. It’s compre­hensive not only in size—with more than 500 works by 150 international artists, both established and emerging—but also in scope, ranging from the subject’s influence on painting, sculpture, film, fashion, and decor, organized among nine separate galleries. Among the standouts is Jo Grogan’s Best Chair, sprouting ceramic tulips, a Victorian-meets-punk ensemble by Andreas Kronthaler for Vivienne Westwood, and an engaging 35-foot-high entry mural by Sophie Mess, titled Journey of Progress. “The beauty and symbolic power of flowers,” say exhibit cocurators Katherine Benson and Rosie Grant, “invite reflection on the human experience.”