Isern Serra Six N. Five interior

Barcelona’s Go-To Interior Designer for Turning Your Office Into an Oasis

This is the story that answers the question: What if you had to go back to the office, but your office looked just like a house? While that wouldn't solve most of the problems that bedevil workplace culture and WFH advocates, maybe it would help? The offices we're featuring today were both designed by the up-and-coming Barcelona-based interior designer Isern Serra — one for the creative studio Six N. Five, and the other the headquarters for ad agency Fuego Camina Conmigo.
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cristina celestino interior

In a Renovated Apartment in Udine, Cristina Celestino Shows the Softer Side of Brutalism

What's the first thing you notice when you scroll through images of this renovated 1970s-era apartment in Udine, Italy? Is it the pink-on-pink walls, a kind of blush and bashful situation? Is it the delicate, fan-shaped Afra and Tobia Scarpa floor lamp (which, we're predicting, is about to blow up in a big way)? Is it the conversation-pit–like living room, covered in wall-to-wall travertine tiles? The genius of Milan-based designer Cristina Celestino is that her interiors give you the space to notice each of these things, but no one element knocks the others out of balance.
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Could You Live in This Color-Blocked Home?

The Madrid-based Burr Studio recently played a neat trick, transforming an office in their native city into a home without modifying the layout in the slightest. For a project called NN06, surface coverings on the ceilings, floors, and walls were removed, leaving a clean slate, and rooms were divided using color-blocking and changes in materiality as their only system of delineation.
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An Insider’s Tour of the French Ski Resort Charlotte Perriand Designed in the 1960s and 70s

From the late 1960s through the 1980s, Charlotte Perriand designed several residential and recreational buildings in France’s Savoy Alps, inspired by the area’s traditional mountain architecture. The monumental project — Les Arcs — became one of the largest ski resorts in the world, and I had the opportunity to spend a few days there last July, documenting its interiors and exteriors.
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You Can Rent Out Hauvette & Madani’s Latest Project in the French Countryside

Parisian interior design duo Hauvette & Madani, who we interviewed a few months ago, just completed a new project — a former farm turned holiday home outside of Paris — and it has everything we could possibly want in a vacation house. The interiors of the stone farmhouse are bursting with the warm touches and earthy palettes we’ve come to love about the duo’s work: pale wood-clad accent walls; arcade-like arched walls in the joint living room and kitchen; patterned tiled floors; and a glossy white ceramic hearth that looks like it’s going to do numbers of Pinterest. The four bedrooms are even full of vintage pieces that you can take home, at a price, including ’70s chrome side tables, Art Deco chairs, and brass Jacques Biny appliqué lamps. The outside isn’t too bad, either. The complex, in Cogners, near the wine producing Loire Valley, sits within two hectares of private parkland complete with rolling hills and a quaint waterfall, as well as the idyllic surrounds of the French countryside at your doorstep. And the best part? You can rent it all yourself.
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The Architect Remaking Santa Barbara, One Outrageously Fun House At a Time

Architect Jeff Shelton has spent his career re-contextualizing the streets of Santa Barbara, California. Whether for residences, businesses, or — soon! — public infrastructure, amidst the endless white “Spanish-style” buildings that define the city, Shelton's whimsical reimagining of the familiar plaster forms stand out. Squiggly purple metalwork, psychedelic patterns, irregular voids, curiously slumped volumes, and unconventional glasswork create structures that, while remaining distinctively Santa Barbara, are also unquestioningly his own.
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A Chat with Erwan Bouroullec About Textiles, Layering, and His Studio’s Newest Showroom for Kvadrat

French designers Erwan and Ronan Bouroullec have such a long and creatively productive history with the celebrated textile producer Kvadrat that they’ve become something like family. So when the Danish company decided it wanted to establish a foothold in Los Angeles this fall, the Bouroullecs came up with a concept that’s a little less like a showroom and a little more like a home — literally. We spoke to Erwan about the project, as well as about how textiles change the way people behave, which design elements make a home, the importance of layering, and the power of stairs.
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Tour the Unbelievable 1930s Color-Blocked Fantasy Interior Hiding Inside a Simple Brick Building in Belgium

The modernist pioneer Jozef Schellekens was the public architect of Turnhout, a Belgian town halfway between Antwerp and Eindhoven, where he worked on schools and city halls. But his best-known and greatest work was his own house, a 1935 rectangular brick-and-glass structure whose simplicity belies the expressiveness of its interior, where Schellekens created a colorful world full of bespoke built-in furniture and other functional and decorative details.
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Tour “The Bae,” A 250 Square-Foot Airbnb Whose Functions Are Hidden in Its Walls

In 2017, Tasmanian architects Alex Neilsen and Liz Walsh bought a 250 square-foot apartment and rebuilt it into their vision of a perfect “micro-luxury” home. Their intent was to create something amazing enough that it could set an example for small-space living, and by renting it out on Airbnb, help open other people’s eyes to its possibilities. The apartment became “The Bae,” and guests who enter it are often nervous at first about its small footprint — but ultimately fall in love.
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13 Incredible Mid-Century Lobbies in Turin Featuring Mosaic Walls, Sculptural Murals, and Other Avant-Garde Motifs

During the 1940s and 50s, a group of highly unorthodox and original designers and architects working in Turin, Italy, were known for their organic and sensual forms, their eclectic inspirations and rich decorations, and their utopian ideas — a Turinese avant-garde. Many interiors reflecting this style remain in tact in the city today, including extraordinary artistic entryways which, hidden from public view, reflect the enduring wildness of the city’s architectural elite.
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