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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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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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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Celebrated Dutch architect and Pritzker Prize laureate (2000) Rem Koolhaas is not known mainly as a designer of private residences. However, the ones he has designed have become iconic. His famous private residence projects include the most recent three, all of them completed more than 30 years ago: the Maison à Bordeaux (1998), Dutch House (1995) and Villa dall’Ava (1991).

The recently completed Austrian House, located on a minuscule 40-foot-wide (12 metre) sloping site by the Zeller See, or Lake Zell, in the Austrian Alps, will undoubtedly settle in the iconic category as well..

The 78-year-old architect, founder of Office of Metropolitan Architecture (OMA) and professor of urban design and architecture at Harvard University, has throughout his career expressed strong convictions about large issues that affect societies, including climate change, democracy and innovation.

And in his design work, be it private houses or massive public and private developments, his strong vision has always been expressed in strong design.

In the Austrian House, the main challenge – and opportunity, if you are Mr. Koolhaas – was the tiny site that slopes down toward the lake. Working closely with the owner and with OMA’s Frederico Pompignoli who was also the lead architect, for example, in OMA’s Fondazione Prada project, Koolhaas tackled the challenge with a decisive and startling solution.

Perhaps the fact that the owner described his site as “unbuildable” at a dinner with Kooolhaas was the trigger that Koolhaas needed. His plan for the house is a 3,000 square foot (279 sq. metre) angular white structure that appears to climb up the slope. When the area is carpeted in snow, the house disappears from view almost completely.

On the 40-foot site, the local building code required 13 feet of setback on each side, leaving space just for a narrow tower-like structure with much of its space situated inside the hill. A highly curated palette of materials, an exquisite lighting program and innovative solutions in terms of doors (sliding, pivoting, retreating), windows and staircases, take full advantage of all available space while maximising natural light and sight lines toward the lake.

In the bathroom, for example, two floor hatches open to reveal a bath and shower hidden below floor level to preserve the view.

All of the technology and innovation, however, doesn’t make the house feel like a cold technology experiment. Rather, and mainly because of the sparce palette of colours and materials, it feels like a calm and balanced home, and at the same time a sculptural and bold response to the unbuildable site challenges.

Rem Koolhaas established his Rotterdam-based Office of Metropolitan Architecture or OMA www.oma.com in 1975 with Elia Zenghelis, Zoe Zenghelis and Koolhaas’s then-wife, Madelon Vissendor. One of his students, Zaha Hadid, joined later.  Currently, OMA has additional offices in Hong Kong, New York, Australia and Doha. OMA’s famous projects include the Seattle Central Library, Qatar national Library, Central China Television Headquarters, Prada Beveerly Hills and New York, and Fondazione Prada in Milan.

Zeller See or Lake Zell is a four-kilometre-long (2.5 mi) and 1.5 kilometres (0.93 mi) wide freshwater lake in the Austrian Alps. It has spectacular views of the Alps and at wintertime, it freezes completely. Tuija Seipell

Images Pernille Loof and Thomas Loo

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Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada-based McLeod Bovell  designed Liminal House for a couple that wanted a residence to meet their needs as soon-to-be empty nesters.

The founders of the design firm, Lisa Bovell and Matt McLeodcall, were the designers in charge of the project that took four years to complete. They named the house Liminal, reflecting the changes and transition in the owners’ life, but also in reference to where the house is located.

It is situated on a breathtaking rocky site in the affluent municipality of West Vancouver surrounded by lush nature with the Pacific Ocean literally at its doorstep. The views are spectacular over the bay toward the city of Vancouver and the University of British Columbia Endowment lands.

In addition to being situated in between an urban area and the forested mountain, Liminal House is also literally in the middle of the drama of the West Coast. The shore changes daily depending on the tides, the wind and the time of year. Huge logs, masses of kelp, tiny shells, sand, pebbles, rock and ocean creatures come and go, everything in a constant state of change, every day.

In the design of the 1,016 square-metre (10,940 sq. ft) house, the designers embraced all of these transitory and shifting aspects and further added to them by including surprising angles and varying textures and sight lines.

Materials such as concrete, glass, aluminium plate and Accoya wood were used in the three-level residence that boasts a swimming pool, two inner courtyards and a 200 square-metre (2,153 sq. ft) roof garden, all of which links it further with the surrounding nature.

A sauna, rec room, wet bar, laundry and a large area for the owners’ collection of rare sports cars occupy the lower level. The main floor includes the kitchen, dining and living rooms plus the garage, pool and a covered terrace. The upper level with its garden includes the master bedroom suite and several guest bedrooms and a larges guest suite with its own terrace.

In spite of its multitude of shifting aspects, Liminal House is not a place of confusion or discord. Rather, there is a tranquil sense of permanence and belonging that is never easy to achieve. Tuija Seipell

Images Hufton + Crow Photography

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Polish-born, Abu Dhabi-based designer Agata Kurzela  has completed an impressive refurbishment of a 1908 heritage building in Abu Dhabi’s historic Khor Al Maqta district.

In the last 20 or so years, the Emirate has transformed into a Middle Eastern hub for contemporary design and culture.

The reconfiguration of this government office into a 2,500 square-metre (26,910 sq.ft) multi-functional space continues this tradition by pushing toward contemporary design but without tarnishing the historical relevance of the building.

This is very much in keeping with the multiple award-winning Kurzela’s ethos of focusing on intelligent and creative use of space, and by highlighting the tactility of materials. She combines the latest technology and sensibilities with ancient methods and style.

In the government office project, Kurzela first peeled back several layers of old materials, partitions and dividers to uncover the original structure of the building. To create the decidedly new iteration, she used every part of the existing building and increased its functionality by adding mezzanines and functional platforms that connect via staircases, and by creating separate pods and enclosed rooms with curved walls, all free-standing within the larger spaces.

The various functions of the new configuration include private offices, flexible workspace areas, exhibition space, separate prayer rooms for women and men, plus stunningly cool bathrooms. Indeed, we love the futuristic bathrooms with their monolithic backsplashes sporting astonishing, locally made mirrors of translucent, opaque and reflective surfaces.

In all, Kurzela aimed to create a complex that is forward-looking yet rooted in Emirati heritage. She used traditional materials such as rough plaster and woven palm mats known as khoos safeefah, and then juxtaposed those with sleek patinated-steel walls and suspended steel chain curtains that form the men’s prayer room.

The desert-inspired sand-hued colour palette calms the space while also evoking the ancient history of the area. Kurzela used local creatives, craftspeople and artisans where-ever possible, further emphasizing the creativity and modernity of the thinking behind the renovation, but doing it in a tradition-respecting manner.

To leave the original ceiling intact, Kurzela had all of the air conditioning ducts inside free-standing columns that appear futuristic and ominous while doing the job perfectly.

Agata Kurzela studied architecture and master planning at the Technical University Gdansk in Poland. Since then, she worked on projects in Paris, London, Saudi Arabia and Oman as senior architect and designer with several well-known studios, including Zaha Hadid.

Now permanently in the Middle East, she launched her own studio in 2020 becoming the go-to architect and designer for prominent and forward-looking projects, including hotels, residential villas and offices. She has also been involved in a massive urban development project and designed the Royal Lounge at Formula One in Abu Dhabi.

The Khor Al Maqta district of Abu Dhabi is known for its great views of the Grand Canal (khor) and the Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque, and for its luxury hotels, restaurants and the Souk Qaryat Al Beri shopping complex that part of the Shangri-la hotel compound. Tuija Seipell

Images by Sebastian Böttcher

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In 2006, when philanthropist and gallerist Shulamit Nazarian bought the famous Smalley House designed by A. Quincy Jones in 1973 on Holmby Hills in Los Angeles, she did not have the house redesigned, only the garden. And even that was a bold move as the garden was also a masterpiece of modernist design originally envisioned by Walter Gropius-trained landscape architect, Garret Eckbo (1910-2000).

The 7,500 square-foot (697 square-metre) house is known as the Smalley house because Jones originally designed it for his friends, the Smalley family. It is one of Jones’s largest single-family residences. The split-level residence features a dramatic textured cedar wall that cuts through the house and leads to the sunken living room that is reached by a stunning staircase.

The living room ceiling soars at the height of 25 feet (7.6 metres) and the room features vast panes of glass. Sometimes Nazarian uses the magnificent living room as a gallery space and stages exhibitions and showcases art curated and managed by Shulamit Nazarian Gallery 

Another key feature of the house are the three interior gardens that feel as if they were as much inside the house as they are outside.

In 2006 Nazarian was quoted as saying that she wanted a home for her and her sons, not a museum of the modernist style. And while she left the house almost entirely intact, she did not furnish it with the traditional mid-century modernist Eames or Kagan pieces. Instead, she furnished it with modern Italian and other contemporary pieces, family treasures, antiques and dramatic art form her art collection.

But now, after living in the house for a long time, she worked with Los Angeles based designer Pamela Shamshiri of www.studioshamshiri.com to adjust it to fit the family’s changing life situations, in particular her sons’ imminent departure for college.

In the entire renovation, Shamshiri and Nazarian endeavoured to speak the Jones design language. In fact they aimed to further emphasize the key features of his architecture.

The  most radical change was the room rearrangement. In the original Jones floor plan, the children’s bedrooms, the family area and the kitchen were on one side of the massive living room, with the master bedroom located on the other side. The new plan has relocated all bedrooms to the private side and the old master bedroom has become a generously proportioned home office and study for Nazarian.

Next to the office, Shamshiri created a new luxurious home spa with a clay sauna and hot tub of black concrete inlaid with black river stones. It echoes the residence’s dramatic Jones-designed floors with circular-patterned concrete hand-inlaid with pebbles.

The circular shape repeats in several locations and pieces throughout the home, most specifically in the completely reconfigured kitchen that now features American black walnut cabinetry and multihued, pale stone counter tops.

The rounded shape is also seen in the sunken living room’s vintage Milo Baughman (1923-2003) sectional sofa atop a green wall-to-wall carpet. Shamshiri selected the carpet to reflect the river-patterned original one specified by the house’s initial decorator, the flamboyant Steve Chase (1942-1994), known for his elegant and opulent design style and his star-studded client list that included Farrah Fawcett, Gene Hackman and Joan Kroc, the owner of McDonald’s.

Archibald Quincy Jones (1913-1979) known as A. Quincy Jones, was a Los Angeles-based, Kansas City-born architect and professor, and later dean, at the University of Southern California School of Architecture. He is best known for his bold modernist style and his pioneering use of greenbelts in urban planning. Many of his best-known residences are glamorous and incorporate post-and-beam construction, an atrium, high ceilings and walls of glass. He was one of the most prolific modernist architects having been involved in well over 5,000 structures in California. He is considered one of Southern California’s mid-century greats.

Members of the Hollywood elite buy up California’s mid-century modernist gems. Jones’s residences are no exception. Actress Jennifer Aniston, for example, bought a three-acre estate in Los Angeles in 2012 that features a seven-bedroom, 10-bathroom house designed by Jones in 1965. Actor Gary Cooper owned a 1955-designed Jones house that was sold in 2010 to art dealer Larry Gagosian for $15.5 million. Tuija Seipell

Images by Stephen Kent Johnson

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