Glimpse This Fashion Designer’s Collection for Farrow & Ball

Christopher John Rogers is known for expressive clothing alive with color, pattern, and joy. But the celebrated Brooklyn-based, Louisiana-born fashion designer’s latest endeavor marks a sea change: Carte Blanche, a capsule collection of paints and wallpapers for U.K.’s Farrow & Ball, is for the home. In the latter category is a wide statement Stripe that can be hung in four different orientations, a Bauhaus-inspired mixed-scale Check that pays homage to Anni Albers, and the graduated and textured Dot, a riff on the flatbed printing method and one of Rogers’s best-known motifs. A dozen paint shades round out the collection, from deep black Liquorice to Hog Plum, a greenish yellow reminiscent of the sweet and sour fruit found across the southern U.S.

Pricefx’s Prague Offices by CollColl Draws Inspo from Pixels

For the Prague office of Pricefx, the standard workplace cubicle just wouldn’t do. The MO of the global software company, its products helping businesses price goods and services, is predicated on flux: The number and type of clients, which range from newly hatched start-ups to long-established corporations, shifts by the day and even the hour, requiring different spatial configurations intended to stimulate creative dialogue. It wanted smart, performative flex space that acts as a physical corollary to the dynamic digital environment in which its clients work and think on-screen.

In 2016, Pricefx hired CollColl—the interdisciplinary firm, its name a portmanteau of “collaborative collective,” founded by partner Krištof Hanzlík—to design an easily adaptable workplace on a half-floor of an open-plan office building. Hanzlík and his team mixed hot desks, coworking spaces, lounges, and open areas with phone-booth enclosures, offices, and small and large meeting rooms. Two years later, the architects expanded the footprint to occupy the full 9,000-square-foot floor. Then in 2020, at the height of the pandemic, when the very concept of office space was in free fall, in a leap of optimism the company re-engaged CollColl to expand to the floor below. But with COVID putting the fundamental viability of such facilities into question, the mandate for flexibility was greater than ever.

CollColl Designs Pricefx’s Prague Offices for Flexibility

CollColl is a small, avant-garde group with a portfolio of both experimental and commercial projects. The success of the two previous efforts in shaping a flexible office landscape suggested the firm’s approach to the new lower level. “We wanted to create a fluid space in which there would be some separation but without distinct rooms,” says Hanzlík, who lead the team along with partner Šimon Kos. “Pricefx throws events for 30, 40, 50 attendees, and there’s a constant flow of people.”

A stainless-steel tubular slide linking the two floors spills into the new main entry, setting a tone that signals the importance of play in a workplace intended to stimulate creative ideas. The playfulness is reinforced by the reception desk, which not only doubles as a coffee bar but, thanks to a grid of LEDs behind its translucent solid-surfacing face, also functions as an interactive billboard on which pixelated images, including the company logo, appear. Nearby, a “gym” area equipped with a billiard table and a punching bag offers actual fun and games, further encouragement for informality and interplay.

The Office Includes an Expansive, Multi-Purpose Conference Room  

Perhaps the most challenging request on the client’s wish list was for a conference table that could seat 50 people during workshops—about twice the number possible previously. Rather than designing a single-purpose room, however, CollColl used seven pairs of glass double doors to partition off one end of the roughly rectangular floor, creating a building-spanning flex space with windows at both ends. This large light-filled area easily accommodates a row of six separate desks—each seating six—that extension leaves quickly turn into a continuous 50-person table: Close the doors and, voilà, an instant conference room. Folding wall panels allow the long space to be divided in half for smaller meetings.

CollColl Takes Inspiration from Video Games

The architects repeat the blocky landscape trope on the other side of the floor, next to the 50-person conference room, where the floor-to-ceiling geometric pile offers a welcome perch during meeting breaks or to people just wandering around with their laptops. And that points to yet another of the unique structures’ multiple functions, as reassuringly fixed landmarks in the floating world that constitutes Pricefx’s mutable workspace.

Walk Through the Pricefx Offices in Prague 

collcoll: adam kössler; libor mládek; mark kelly

sysloop: lighting consultant

av24: audiovisual consultant

olbert tomáš: woodwork

bauhanz: general engineer

capexus: general contractor

alfeko: custom slide (entrance)

molteni&c: armchairs (café)

Dupont: bar solid-surfacing

studio vono: chairs, barstools

Bosch: oven

XAL: pendant fixtures (meeting room)

lintex: whiteboard

vitra: tables, chairs (meeting room, conference room, av studio)

3deco: wall finishes (meeting room, conference room)

verti: glass partitions (meeting room, conference room)

av24: av equipment (av studio)

barrisol: concealed lighting (grotto)

common seating: ottomans (conference room)

freifrau manufaktur: swing seat

Interface: hard flooring, carpet tile

farrow & ball: paint

How Atelier Cho Thompson Revamped EQ’s Boston Office

Custom Accents and Original Features Shine in EQ’s Boston Office

Initial efforts were subtractive. Removing decades worth of carpet and vinyl tile in the lobby revealed handsome terrazzo flooring requiring only patching. Next, bringing the “exterior ornamentation inside,” Thompson notes, translated to a “fluted” focal wall CNC-cut with slender arches, some fitted with padded leather, a nod to shoe manufacturing, to function as backs for a built-in banquette. The reception desk is similarly grooved, “but at a different scale, so it reads more hospitality than security,” Thompson continues. Streamlined globe pendant fixtures, almost art moderne in feel, glow from above.

The fluting, leather, and lighting continue in the adjoining events space and fifth-floor collaboration area. Both feature walls of original brick, which Thompson unearthed and retained the holes and pocks to celebrate the site’s age. She learned from interviews that occupants expressed more interest in a historic rather than a futuristic setting, and took that into consideration in conceiving signage, crafted in solid brass, just like the shoe building’s original mail chute.

bendheim: balustrade glass (lobby)

armadillo: rug (collaboration)

West Elm: tables (lobby)

through gestalt: stools (events)

hugo & hoby: custom tables

crump & kwash: chairs

katy skelton: custom lighting

farrow & ball: paint

spinneybeck: leather

sean thornhill: artwork

lam partners: lighting consultant

cadwell design & sign: custom signage

mcnamara salvia: structural engineer

commercial construction consulting: mep

butler architectural woodworking: millwork

structure tone: general contractor

Kingston Lafferty Design Transforms a Historic Schoolhouse into a Chic Abode in Galway, Ireland

The first time Róisín Lafferty met the owners of a landmarked Georgian-style schoolhouse-turned-cool-house in coastal Galway, Ireland, they’d set out tea and fresh-baked treats in their cozy, little kitchen for the occasion. “There was a homey feel from the minute you stepped inside,” the Kingston Lafferty Design founder and creative director recalls. “They were a lovely, dynamic family of seven, quite young at heart and also a bit nostalgic.” The charming historic abode suited the residents’ personality, but it had issues, including outdated electrical wiring, no central air, and a single shower for all of them to share. A mishmash of rear-facing exten­sions and small service buildings that had been added over time also blocked garden views and the influx of natural light into the deep floor plate. “It felt very dark, and the configuration didn’t make great use of the space,” Lafferty says. “The clients loved the character of the house, but it just wasn’t working for them.”

A nearly five-year restoration, renovation, and redecoration effort ensued to expand the terrace house into a five-bedroom, four-bath residence. KLD collaborated with local firm Helena McElmeel Architects, which helped navigate the municipality’s strict conservation board and took the lead on structural work. The most forceful spatial modifications were made in the back of the property, where the updated kitchen now leads to a window-wrapped, skylight-capped modern addition housing an orangerie-style dining room (where a damp lean-to once stood) and a family lounge. An existing conservatory was also upgraded with new glazing to form a breakfast room, accessed via portals punched through the kitchen’s super-thick stone walls, their depths clad with green marble tile to annunciate the transition from old to new.

The Design Team Transforms Old into New, Spotlighting the Home’s Historic Details  

The décor follows a similar ethos of repurposing. A kitchen table was recycled, raised, and topped with a stone slab to form the cooking island, now illuminated by a cluster of pendant fixtures transplanted from corridors throughout the house. Antique cabinets left behind by a previous owner were carefully integrated into millwork, such as the main bathroom’s armoire, augmented by a marble countertop and antiqued brass legs to create a vanity. Mismatched Michael Thonet chairs handed down from various relatives were grouped around the custom dark-stained oak dining table, imparting a collected-over-time feel. Also repurposed: an original pass-through hatch between the kitchen and the moody reading room, now framed with bronze-tinted mirrored panels that lend the latter space a subtly ominous aura. (“That room is 100 percent inspired by The Handmaid’s Tale,” Lafferty acknowledges.) Not worth salvaging, alas, was a beautifully hued but far-too-frayed stair runner, but its palette lives on in the home’s prevailing tones of sky blue, burgundy, terra-cotta, and mustard.

KLD also layered in more current vintage pieces, such as the front lounge’s mid-century Sputnik chandelier and angular travertine cocktail tables. Lending oh-so-’70’s verve is the rear lounge’s conversation pit, recessed into the concrete floor to preserve sight lines to the garden. “The builder kept asking why we were putting a swimming pool in there!” Lafferty jokes. Further channeling that era is the room’s Mah Jong sofa, dressed in moss-green velvet. “I’d only ever seen the sofa in flashy patterned fabric, but looking at images from when the design first came out, in 1971, I realized it was usually upholstered in something plain, which I preferred,” Lafferty says.

The Home Restoration Offers a Family Room to Grow

Upstairs, the sleeping quarters intermix traditional and modern elements, spiked with a dose of whimsy. The hotel-like main suite, which overtakes most of the second story, encompasses a bedroom, a walk-in dressing room, and a bathroom complete with a fire­place, soaking tub, and glassed-in wet zone. Much effort went into making the large bed­room feel more intimate. “Before, it was just a lonely little bed in a very big room that swallowed up furniture,” Lafferty notes. Now, minimalist but period-appropriate paneling brings a sense of scale to the space, and artfully integrates a curvilinear velvet headboard and bedside sconces. The bathroom is not tech­nically part of the bedroom but instead opens off a landing one half-flight down, where it can be annexed for overflow from the neighboring powder room if needed during brush-teeth or bath time.

While the goal in the parents’ sanctum was to make a large space feel cozier, KLD’s ap­proach to the kids’ zone on floor three was the opposite: making smallish space live larger. The youngest of the three daughters, for instance, got the tiniest bedroom, so the hanging chair on the adjacent stair landing serves as her de facto lounge area. The two boys share a room, and there Lafferty took advantage of the high ceilings with peculiarly tall loft beds that offer plenty of floor space below for hangout and work areas. “The beds remind me of Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events,” Lafferty says. “I like the creepiness of them!” Reference to narrative is, indeed, something of a through line for the entire project: “There’s a sense of emotion and atmosphere when you walk into the house; it just kind of washes over you,” she observes. “It feels like you’re part of a story.” One with a very happy ending.

helena mcelmeel architects: architect

o’gorman joinery: millwork

Roche Bobois: sofa (rear lounge)

davide groppi: pendant fixture

flos: wall light

baked earth: terra-cotta floor tile (dining room)

rocca stone: floor tile

knoll: sofa (front lounge)

through 1st dibs: cocktail tables

tile style: hearth tiles

soho home: rug (front lounge), side table (main bedroom)

martin & brockett: console (entry)

Gubi: chair (study)

square in circle: pendant fixture (study), sconces (bathroom)

HK Living: hanging chair (landing)

irugs: rug (main bedroom)

lizzo: curtain, headboard, pillow fabric

ray shannon upholstery: custom headboard, custom pillow fabrication

mix & match: custom curtain fabrication

socialite family: sconces

ZARA HOME: bench (main bedroom), beanbag (boys’ bedroom)

kutikai: dresser (boys’ bedroom)

finnish design shop: rug

through nest: pendant fixture

eicholtz: pendant fixture (bath­room)

mosaic assemblers: floor tile

versatile bathrooms: sinks

leinster stone: countertop

farrow & ball: paint

vintage hub: vintage vases, styling objects

Kingston Lafferty Design Infuses a House in Cork, Ireland With Soothing Shades of Green

When the design history of the pandemic is written, it will be told with tales of firms completing projects without ever physically meeting clients, setting foot inside job sites before they’re finished, and other protracted, unexpected developments. Lovers Walk—a residence in Cork, Ireland, by Kingston Lafferty Design—is one of those stories. “It started as a small decoration job for us,” founder and creative director Róisín Lafferty recounts. “But it grew legs and ended up as a substantial design project.” The two-story, four-bedroom suburban house was purchased by a couple looking to return to Ireland from abroad to raise their young son. As the pandemic struck and timelines extended, the scope kept evolving to encompass every element of the house. “We had to think on our feet,” Lafferty concedes.

At first, the house looked solidly built, but project collaborators Kiosk Architects discovered that the structure had major issues with energy efficiency. Original flooring needed to be removed, and the exterior required extra work to meet current standards. “The clients put a lot of trust in us,” Lafferty says, “which was bold and brave considering that we didn’t meet in person until the end of construction.”

The house was built in the 1940s. What attracted the homeowners—and informed KLD’s concept—was the central staircase, part of a ’70s addition and somewhat in that era’s style. Lafferty loved its warm, almost orange-toned oak joinery, which creates a strong impression on both levels. “It’s quite dominant,” notes the designer, to whom the clients had first turned for her firm’s signature look. The 11-year-old practice has earned a reputation for experimenting with bold swaths of solid color, mostly in paint: blood-red walls for a café in London; a deep-blue theater for a corporate office in Skerries, Ireland; and, most notably, a widely published Victorian house in Dublin with blue walls, a green ceiling, and a ruby-red dining table.

The house, located on a cliff overlooking the city, is surrounded by large oak trees. “We wanted to bring in that depth of green,” says Lafferty, who, along with KLD lead designer Fiona Stone, went beyond paint to inject the rooms with warmth and color that complemented the site. Hence much of the living room is wrapped in moss-green marble; forest-green heavy wool curtains hang in the child’s room, which is painted a similar shade, his favorite color; and the primary bedroom’s headboard wall is clad in jade porcelain tiles (by Gio Ponti, no less).

The layout of the living room, which had been fussy, was streamlined. A sofa upholstered in deep-navy velvet adds punch to the space. Similar jewel tones were chosen to balance the room’s marble-rich palette, which reminded Lafferty of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe’s Barcelona Pavilion. “We needed a poppiness to jar against that,” she notes. Adding another layer to the mix, the clients allowed their contemporary art collection—mostly playful, abstract works—to be positioned throughout the house as the design best allowed. “They weren’t precious about it,” Lafferty reports.

To add drama to the journey from the entry hall to the kitchen and dining area, Lafferty and Stone inserted a tunnellike portal lined with red finger tiles between the spaces. The clients didn’t want the kitchen to be overwhelmed with storage cabinets, so the designers kept them at base level, covering the countertops, island, and two wall-size backsplashes with pink quartzite that’s “like rock candy,” Lafferty says—a move that places added emphasis on the above-sink picture window and its view out onto nature. While Lafferty admits some might consider the rosewood-veneer cabinetry to be outdated, she relished the idea of pushing the materials so they’re “almost on the cusp of clashing.”

Upstairs, each of the three bedrooms—for the couple, their son, and guests, respectively—has its own color story. Riffing off the ’70s vibe, the guest room juxtaposes cobalt blue curtains against walls painted a buff pink called Dead Salmon; a navy shaglike carpet adds to the theme, which Lafferty describes as “almost disgusting.” The designers are particularly proud of the primary bedroom, “a small space that needed to look sleek and effortless,” Stone notes. Access is via a wide, open passageway with chevron-pattern oak flooring and three large, angled skylights set into the sloped roofline. A vanity of burgundy marble is tucked under the eaves on one side of the room; a walk-in closet and the bathroom lie behind the opposite wall, which is faced in lacquered walnut-burl veneer that abuts the green tile of the headboard wall around the corner. “It’s like a jewelry box with so many materials used,” Stone continues. “But it feels incredibly calm. There’s almost a nostalgic air about it”—a verdict with which the clients agree. It seems their trust in KLD’s boldly unconventional aesthetic has paid off handsomely.

Kiosk Architects: architect of record

herrick electrical: mep

dfl: woodwork

miller brothers: stonework

cameleo: plasterwork

rose construction: general contractor

arflex: sofa, ottoman (living room)

modern hill furniture: orange chair

oluce: lamp

moore o’gorman joinery: custom cocktail table

fest amsterdam: side table

urban nature culture: vase

muurla: gray bowl

hkliving: blue bowl

Juanma Lizana: chandelier

jover: curtain fabric (living room, kitchen)

flos: pendant fixture (kitchen)

miele: cooktop, ovens, r­e­frigerator

Blanco: sink

quooker: sink fittings

cinca: finger tile (portal)

astep: pendant fix­ture (entry hall)

wow design: vanity front tile (main bathroom)

rmc: shower wall tile

through 1stdibs: chair (guest bedroom)

Hay: pendant fixture

edmund bell: curtain fabric

scatter box: bedspread

jacaranda carpets: carpet (guest, child bedrooms)

driade: chair (child bedroom)

muuto: pendant fixture

kvadrat: curtain fabric

trunk floor: custom wood flooring (child, main bedrooms)

&tradition: sofa (dining area)

yarwood leather: banquette upholstery

zava luce: sconces (dining area, portal)

Courtesy of Gubi: vanity chair (main bedroom)

natuzzi italia: bed, nightstand

salviati: sconce

tal: spotlights

teamwork italy: wall tile

louise roe copenhagen: vases

mason editions: pendant fixture (family bathroom)

crosswater: towel ring

nic design: sink (family, guest bathrooms)

astro lighting: downlights

stone seal: concrete flooring

cork glass center: bathroom glass, mirror, shower screens

vos: bathroom sink fittings

minima home: furniture supplier

farrow & ball: paint

Viterbo Interior Design Revives Hotel Albatroz in Cascais, Portugal

Hotel Albatroz has been centuries in the making. The boutique seaside property in Cascais, Portugal, started out in the early 1900s as a grand residence built for the Lancastre family, its architecture a blend of Italian, Moorish, neo-Gothic, and neo-Manueline styles. In the 1940s it was converted into an inn, hosting such bold names as Ava Gardner, Cary Grant, and Rudolf Nureyev as they vacationed on what’s called the Portuguese Riviera. The 51-key hotel was expanded and redesigned in the 1980s by Viterbo Interior Design, then headed by Graça Viterbo. Now it has just unveiled its latest renovation, and it’s by Gracinha Viterbo, the firm partner and creative director and Graca’s daughter. “I have recollections of coming here with my mother when I was very young,” she says, “which has helped me bridge the project’s past and present.” That translates to preserving such original details as the hand-carved banisters and pairing them with new yet historically inspired elements like the bar’s mirrors that nod to Portuguese wicker baskets and striking cerulean tilework. Adds Viterbo: “There are blue hues for days.”