Avoiding the tired recreational ski resort style of log structures and gabled roofs, architect

Omar Gandhi has nevertheless managed to create a “cottage” feel in the project he named White Rock after a community in the area.

The Gaspereau River Valley is the agricultural centre of the province of Nova Scotia located on the extreme east coast of Canada. The area is known for its recreational opportunities including skiing, biking and wine-tasting.

The modern steel-clad bunker on stilts was designed by Gandhi and his friend for their families, best friends, employees and partners as a meditative retreat and an escape.

Ganhdi says that in his architectural practice, they consider all of their creations as creatures. And indeed, White Rock, the cocoon-like perch in the woods, does seem like it could walk off the cliff or, alternatively, become not just a bird house but actually grow wings and take off over the valley. Yet it is also a solidly permanent nest that appears to have taken a liking to its rocky situation.

The cabin was created using strictly minimalist palettes in materials, colours and furnishings. The two-level structure accommodates the private spaces on the bottom level and the living areas in an open plan on the top level.

Dark smoky-black and silvery grey colours dominate the open-plan living areas. Some vintage touches of the cabin vernacular in the living room. For example, next to a small modern fireplace a vintage black-leather Arne Norell lounge chair faces tall windows flanked by a smoky-grey stainless-steel bench.

In the bedrooms, floor-to-ceiling wood paneling, sparse furniture and views of the thick forest create a relaxed sense of seclusion and protection, and highlight the cabin-like simplicity.

On top of the two levels, accessible via a hatch door, is Gandhi’s favourite space, the rooftop patio with open views toward the valley.

The most modern part of the cabin is the kitchen where stainless steel dominates. The designers worked with New Zealand-based, globally operating Fisher & Paykel known as designers of luxury appliances.

Vancouver-based architectural photographer Ema Peter  fell in love with the cabin as she had the opportunity stay on location when photographing it for the architects.

“Most of my life I chase the light and architectural shoots are filled with action and adrenaline,” she tells The Cool Hunter. “What was different for me at White Rock was that I felt peaceful. I rarely feel that kind of sense of calmness,” she adds.

“I felt I was chasing the light but in a calmer, deeper way. The nature and forest seemed to be inside of the home with the shadows and reflections everywhere. It made me feel like I was completely removed from the world and I felt like time there was a little bit slower allowing me to just be. I really had a retreat-like experience I will never forget.”

Peter concludes that calm is what we all need right now. “Omar and his team have truly managed to achieve exactly what we all need at the moment: a sense of zen and reflection.”

Omar Gandhi established Omar Gandhi Architects in 2010. It has offices is both Halifax, Nova Scotia, and Toronto, Ontario. The highly successful practice has completed projects across Canada. Tuija Seipell

Images: Ema Peter

See also Prime Seafood by the same architect.

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Floating in a luxuriously classic Celine bathtub  while viewing the Eiffel Tower is not an experience many people get to have at home, even in the opulent 16th arrondissement of Paris. However, at Apartment Henri-Martin, located along Avenue Henri-Martin, this is exactly what the owners can do now, after an extensive reconfiguration and renovation of their opulent home.

Typically to many of Paris’s formerly affluent homes, the sizeable apartment had changed hands and configurations multiple times and, just like so many previously opulent residences, had been divided into smaller rooms.

Emphasizing and taking her cues from the original parquet floors, tall windows and archways of the apartment, Paris-based designer Marika Dru of Atelier MKD proceeded to reveal the essential beauty of the residence while inserting a highly considered set of modern touches. The goal of the owners and their designer was to bring the gorgeous place to life while creating a livable home.

Dru refrained from over-doing the modernization and instead created a balanced whole with elegant modernist touches. These include several pieces of furniture from Cassina’s Capitol Complex series.

It is a series of Jeanneret-designed reproductions that harken back to the 1953-established city of Chandigarh in India. With its master plan and several buildings designed by Le Corbusier, it is one of the earliest planned cities in India. The city’s Capitol Complex was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2016.

Le Corbusier’s cousin, Pierre Jeanneret designed several practical chairs for the Capitol Complex with many at the time being manufactured in India and produced by the thousands.

In the Paris apartment, eight of Cassina’s 051 Capitol Complex office chairs – one of the best-known pieces of the Capitol Complex series – were used to surround the glossy dining table in a daylight-bathed dining area of the living room.

In the seating area, Pierre Augustin Rose’s Duo Multilaque coffee table is flanked by two of Cassina 053 Capitol Complex armchairs.

With its numerous museums, prestigious schools and parks, the 16^th arrondissement is considered one of the French high society’s favourite places of residence. Significant museums in the area include Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris Museum of Modern Art and Palais de Tokyo. Tuija Seipell

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Bringing to life the darkly shiny opulence of dining rooms of the past was the goal of chef-owners Craig Harding and Julian D’Ippolito when they set out to create Bar Prima in Toronto’s Queen West neighbourhood.

Toronto-based Future Studio  was entrusted with the owners’ retro ideas and they have delivered a stunning setting. It reflects both an Italian vibe and an “old Toronto diner” feel in its brown panelling, mirrors and gold touches that are enhanced with rich blue upholstery and red velvet drapery.

The star attractions of the vintage visual show, however, are definitely the floor and the ceiling. Bar Prima’s ceiling was gold-leafed by hand by a professional gilder. It is a startling sight that draws everyone’s eyes up in the otherwise low and low-lit space.

The other stunner is the floor. Again, artisans recreated it following a 1960s pattern of marble floor that originally covered the floor of the Rome residence of American artist and sculptor, Cy Twombly (1928-2011).

With the background sound of Italian disco, and a menu of traditional Italian with a twist, Bar Prima is not stuffy or painfully retro. There’s a sense of fun and surprise and innovative thinking that the owners are keen to explore further in this undertaking.

Bar Prima is Harding and D’Ippolito’s second Toronto restaurant following the Dundas Street La Palma. Tuija Seipell

Images Rick O’brien

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Theresa Obermoser, Austrian-born, London-based designer and founder of TO Interior Design  has completed the three-year overhaul of a Renaissance-style building in Vienna where she also has offices. The result is Am Hof 8 Austria’s first private members club.

Her signature eclectic and internationally inspired style combines Scandinavian, Japanese and French design features. The same is true of Am Hof 8. Over nine floors, she has placed a basement nightclub, three restaurants, a shared work space, five hotel rooms, a rooftop terrace and even a few “secret rooms” to create a social retreat, a versatile home-away-from-home for both locals and visitors.

In this project, Obermoser is combining Vienna’s historical opulence and rich cultural heritage with contemporary trends and timeless features.

We especially like the upholstered seating throughout the project. There is a strict primness about them, yet the muted pastel colours lend them a delicious, opulent, by-gone-era feeling of grandiose spaces and wealthy patrons, classy speakeasies and shady deals.

The building, known today as Kattus Haus, is located on Vienna’s historic Am Hof square. The tallest local building of its time it was completed in 1508 and called High House.

Since 1857 it has been owned by the Kattus family whose first business in the building was a store operated by Johannes Kattus and trading in international delicacies including champagne, wine, coffee, tea, tropical fruits and caviar.

Fast forward to today when Johannes’s descendant and namesake Johannes Kattus, CEO of Kattus Beteiligungs GmbH, decided it was time to establish a modern gentlemen’s club in Vienna and to do that in the historical, Grade-III-listed Kattus building.

Open to all genders and age groups, Am Hof 8 is a mix of styles and eras that aims to feel new to the Viennese members, and decidedly Viennese to international members. A tall order that is achieved, for example, through indirect nods to Viennese favourites such as Vienna’s finest greenhouse, the Grosses Palmenhaus Schönbrunn,  https://www.bundesgaerten.at/schlosspark-schoenbrunn/das-grosse-palmenhaus.html and through the use of various colour and décor schemes in each space.  Tuija Seipell

Images by Vigo Jansons

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Located far enough from London to qualify as countryside, The Makers Barn started its transformation as an abandoned and uninhabitable pig shed, a farm building of asbestos and concrete.

But the London-based couple that purchased it, fell in love with the location by low hills and fields of wildflowers and charged designer Craig Hutchinson of HUTCH design to not only make it habitable but to uncover the full potential of the project. They wanted a relaxing retreat in which to disconnect from city life and reconnect with nature.

After a dramatic series of interventions, the owners now have a gorgeous 65 square-metre (700 sq.ft) house full of light and seemingly a natural part of the landscape.

With its material palette of natural textures, and its colour scheme of hues that reflect the surrounding wildflower garden, The Makers Barn is now a highly functional retreat where the spaces are arranged around a central chimney and fireplace of poured concrete.

There are also several functional components – including a wood-burning stove and solar energy captors – that enable the couple to live in the house year-round, if they so choose.

Key features of the house include thick plastered walls, timber columns and a larch timber-clad roof, all of which are also nods to the local vernacular.

Inside, the spaces flow organically into each other, creating a feel of relaxed openness. In selecting the materials for walls, ceilings, floors, furniture and furnishings, the designers focused on emphasis on crafted, organic materials with earth tones, and styled the spaces with a mix of pieces from skilled artisans and well-known designers.

In the living-area, our favourite nook features a frameless corner window that opens up to the concrete patio and the meadow beyond.

Inside, the seating area is furnished with Mario Bellini’s 1970-designed Camaleonda armchairs by B&B Italia and a folded-metal coffee table. Above the grouping, the designers placed Anders, a pendant light fixture by Pinch a hand-made of traditional milliner material, albaca fibre.

We also love the overall scale of the building and the way it sits peacefully within the landscape.  Tuija Seipell

Images Helen Cathcart

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Hong Kong-based interior design firm Lim + LU founders Elaine Lu and Vince Lim received a dream assignment from their friends: to design an office space that would accommodate three generations working together in a home-like environment. The client wanted a functional office yet wished to avoid the cold and boring office vibe.

The 300 square-metre (3,229 sq.ft) space exudes elegant simplicity. The designers achieved a sense of relaxed harmony through the use of an extremely limited colour palette and by emphasizing the detailing of each piece.

The entire space and all of its components are in pastel cream and sand hues with only selected lighting, door frames and handles, office chairs and small details in black giving the space structure.

The materials, from wood slats and marble to rattan and gently textured upholstery, emphasize the residential atmosphere while managing to avoid anything that seems too domestic or prim.

A large custom-created Viola Marble boardroom table is surrounded by wood-frame upholstered bar stools. The same dramatic marble adorns the backsplashes in the kitchen and cabinet tops in the office.

Mid-century modernist furniture adds to the timelessness as do the rattan cabinetry and wooden slats. Sliding glass partitions are used to enlarge and decrease the spaces based on the family’s needs.

We particularly like the sense of welcoming calm, created by how the narrow entry corridor flanked by wooden slats opens up to the small seating group in the lounge. Tuija Seipell

Images Common Studio

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Szakats’ embroidered canvasses reflect a harmony with the natural world, not just in subject of flora and fauna, where people are notably absent, but with our perception of it. We see moments in motion, not artificial stills, in the arresting effect of the meticulously brushed mohair material. Here, the static art object is infused and animated with pulsating moving colour, drawing us into a realm where colour frays, melts, and merges, becoming almost liquid and escaping the confinement of line. It invites us to meditate on the rigid distinctions we oft make between ourselves and our environment.

In this work, the juxtaposition of means and materials matters; the AI-generated compositions made in mili moments are measured against the time-consuming efforts of traditional hand-made mohair embroidered craft. We are compelled to consider this contrast, our relationship to art, its conceptualisation as it changes and responds to new technology, and how we fuse and accommodate the modern with the traditional.

Szakats’ deft and deliberate blending of these seemingly disparate elements not only navigates the divide but draws them together, at once illuminating a new avenue of artistic expression and reconciling it with artistic heritage. Mark Cunial

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Known for staging outlandish events and creating lavish interiors for a client list of celebrities, business tycoons and socialites, Ken Fulk has left his extravagant mark on yet another icon.

This time, his magic touch has revitalized the interior of the landmark Miami Women’s Club building, located in the Edgewater neighborhood on Biscayne Bay.

Designed in 1926 by architect August Geiger as one of the first public libraries in Florida, the Mediterranean Revival-style building was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1974.

Although by now dilapidated and decaying, it inspired two hospitality industry movers and shakers, Groot Hospitality’s founder David Grutman and Tao Group Hospitality’s co-CEO Noah Tepperberg.

They purchased the building as their first cooperative venture and then invited Fulk to use his creative verve to transform the lower floors of the building into the aptly named Casadonna (house of the woman), a 20,000 square-foot dining emporium.

In Casadonna, Fulk is boldly and extravagantly channelling Havana and Miami, using the Floridian pastel pinks, blues and greens, and richly upholstered furniture. Live plants and plant-inspired fabrics, wall murals and art add a lush, relaxed feel for guests enjoying the establishment’s Riviera-style Italian cuisine.

Since 1997, when the Virginia-native Ken Fulk based his magic factory in San Francisco, he has approached his projects – from hotels to private parties – as a movie. He focuses on the point of view and on the core of the narrative. What is the story? Why should anyone care?

His book, The Movie in My Mind, was published in 2022 by Assouline. Today, Ken Fulk’s team includes approximately 90 ‘cast members’ in San Francisco and New York. Tuija Seipell

Images Ngoc Minh Ngo

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The landscape of the British Isles is scattered with centuries-old palaces, castles, manor houses and spectacular estates. Some are owned by royalty and aristocracy, some by the National Trust, and many by enthusiasts with substantial amounts of money who have decided to make a go of maintaining such a money-guzzler.

In Bradford-on-Avon in Wiltshire, England, film maker Paul Weiland and his wife Caroline embarked on just such a journey 30 years ago when they purchased Belcombe Court and the surrounding estate. The Georgian manor overlooks the Avoncliff valley where the railway, the River Avon and the Kennet & Avon Canal are all located.

What really sold the estate to the couple was the landscape surrounding the house. Now that they have worked on the house, garden and woods for three decades, the garden has been described as a miniature Stourhead the National Trust -operated estate also located in Wiltshire and famous for its garden that is considered one of the world’s most spectacular gardens.

Constructed of ashlar stone the house is complete with a miniature lake and rotunda, a cottage orné and other 18th-century features, typical of the picturesque garden style.

The 15^th-century estate had changed hands frequently in the 1900s and it was in a dilapidated state when the Weilands bought it. Before 1900s, Becombe had been the country seat of the Yerburys, a local family with fortunes made in wool. In 1734, Francis Yerbury commissioned the famous John Wood the Elder to re-envision the main house in the then-fashionable Palladian style.

The nearby Stourhead must have inspired Francis Yerbury to also embellish the garden and create the grandiose scheme of which the Weilands have re-established several features while also adding contemporary touches.

They commissioned gardening expert, Chelsea gold-medal-winner and author Rupert Golby to design a summer garden to complement the small 18th-century octagonal stone building the couple calls the Summer House. Arne Maynard, also the designer of the Weilands’ London garden, reconfigured the one-acre walled garden. Today, Belcombe boasts 60 acres of formal gardens, parkland and woods.

With the house itself fully re-designed by the Weilands, the couple is now full-time resident at Belcombe. However, they feel they are just at the start of the unexpected discoveries thy keep making on the estate. These include ruins of a temple and 32 giant North American sequoia giganteum redwood trees.

As so many contemporary owners of large estates, the Weilands are generating income from renting the house out for weddings and other events. Tuija Seipell

Images by Eva Nemeth

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Using startling wall colours sparingly and adding stunning mid-century modernist pieces, Amsterdam-based Framework Studio  has created an elegant penthouse apartment in Overhoeks, Amsterdam, for an empty-nester couple for whom Framework had already designed another residence.

Overhoeks is the area known formerly as the Royal Dutch Shell Research Facility Grounds. Its redevelopment began in 2007 and it is now an up-and-coming, mixed-use neighborhood located across the river IJ from the city’s central railway station and serviced by a regular ferry route.

The star-shaped, three-bedroom penthouse apartment is located on the seventh floor of a new brick building. It was designed in the Amsterdam School style, an architectural movement of the 1920s sometimes linked to the German Brick Expressionist style.

The apartment is 250 square-metres (2,691 sq. ft) in size and boasts also a 120 square-metre (1,292 sq.ft) terrace.

The curving walls of the residence are echoed in the shapes of the partitions and furnishing, such as mirrors and lighting fixtures. This repetition directs the eye toward the bending forms and calms down what could otherwise be a confusing layout.

In the living room, eye-catching mid-century modernist touches include our favourite, the blood-red swivel lounge chair Mercury by the Italian Rito Valla  (1963), plus the low and curvy Serpentine sofa by Vladimir Kagan (1950) www.vladimirkagan.com . Tuija Seipell

Images Cafeine – Thomas de Bruyne

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