Barry and Sheryl Schwartz’s retreat by the Pacific Ocean in Santa Barbara would be stunning even if it were completely unfurnished. The spectacular openness of the structure and the tangible presence of the ocean would suffice.

But the luxurious touches added by Barry, the 77-year-old renowned luminary of thoroughbred racing and co-founder of Calvin Klein (in 1968), and Sheryl, his wife of more than 50 years, take this tranquil getaway to the level of magnificence.

All we can do is sigh and imagine how our lungs will fill up with the fresh Pacific Ocean air, and how our senses heighten with the ever-changing views, the scent of salt and wood, and the calling of seagulls.

Loving all of this, the Schwartzes had rented a house at the beach for about a decade but when the neighbouring plot became available, they decided to create their own version of a surfside haven.

To design the house, they hired California-based architect Howard Backen of Backen & Gillam known for designing, for example, the Disney’s Sound Studios, MGM Studios Theme Park, Skywalker Ranch and the Sundance Institute, and more recently, numerous wineries.

In charge of interior design were mother and son interior designers, Kathleen and Tommy Clements of Clements Design whose client list includes Ellen DeGeneres, Jennifer Aniston and other Hollywood celebrities.

Landscape architect Mark Rios of RCH Studios handled the landscaping of the courtyard and gardens.

The exterior and gardens are understated and inconspicuous. The landscapers brought in fully grown ficus and olive trees and selected only plants that belong in the local landscape.

The architects used unassuming materials such as reclaimed teak on the walls and titanium on the roof. Everything aims to help the structure seem a long-time part of the spectacular site and its landscape.

The conspicuous drama intensifies at the enigmatic entry gate designed by France-based French-Swedish sculptor and furniture designer Ingrid Donat. This was her first commission of this kind but it echoes her previous dramatic wood and bronze creations inspired by African tribal art, Art Deco, Art Nuveau, Gustav Klimt and Gustave Eiffel. The grand gate, clad in bronze panels was the Schwartzes’ 50^th wedding anniversary gift to themselves. The handle is subtly inscribed with “50 years.”

Inside, the drama of the magnificent Pacific Ocean truly unfolds through an open and grand 40-foot-wide, column-free common space. And although the ocean is the main attraction in nearly every room and the overall tone is minimalist, each space includes remarkable examples of vintage, midcentury modernist and contemporary furniture, and both ancient and modern pieces of art.

The most unusual and openly glamorous piece, a mirrored bar cabinet of silver-plated brass and glass by Milan-based master of dramatic furniture Vincenzo De Cotiis, is located in the smaller dining room. The limited-edition cabinet is available through the Carpenters Workshop Gallery where Donat’s work is also sold and exhibited. Tuija Seipell.

Photography: William Abranowicz

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A bookstore by definition is a store that sells books. And the traditional western retail thinking assumes that every square inch of a bookstore earns its keep by helping sell books. Consequently, large book stores have more or less disappeared in the wake of online retail. Reading areas with cozy arm chairs, play areas for kids and coffee shops are now rare.

Things are different in China. Every week, we discover another massive retail store that is dedicated to reading and books. Many are much larger than most community libraries in most countries, and there seems to be no lack of funding for extravagant design and ‘unproductive’ space. Selling books is secondary to the idea of encouraging the public to read.

Gonverge Interior Design, based in Taipei, Taiwan, is not new to designing massive bookstores in China. Neither is the 3,500 square metre (37,674 sq.ft) E Pang Bookstore the largest they have designed. But it is one of the more interesting ones.

The design of this store takes a bold stab at combining the long history and the ambitious future of the area. Located in the Fengdong Free Trade Zone, Fengdong New Town, Xixian New Area in Xi’an City, , E Pang has an impressive story to tell.

Xi’an is the ancient capital of 13 dynasties and Fengdong used to be the administrative centre of Qin Dynasty. The bookstore is named after the Epang Palace of Qin Shi Huang, emperor of China, whose palace construction started in 212 BC but was never completed.

With no large reading rooms anywhere within five kilometres in Fengdong, E Pang Bookstore was designed to fill that gap and provide a contemporary space for book lovers. Designated also as a library, E Pang serves as a centre of cultural activities and integrates itself into active urban life.

The three striking design components are the curving concrete elements that evoke a sense of futuristic bulk and substance, the wooden bookshelves that echo the bookish rooms of the past, and the skylights that give the entire space lightness and airiness.

A large adult reading area is void of distractions with wooden floors, walls and ceilings and unassuming wood tables and chairs.

A coffee shop is linked with the actual bookstore that presents books in traditional light-wood shelving and display tables. Tuija Seipell

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We wouldn’t wish illness on anyone, but if one must stay at a hospital, we wouldn’t mind if instead of the run-of-the-mill scary infirmary, we’d be treated at Gandel Wing, Cabrini Hospital, Malvern in Melbourne, Australia.

Cabrini Health’s new Clinical Services building reminds us more of elegant hotels and Poliform stores than hospitals. And while many health care organizations, both private and public, have started to think of patient and staff comfort and well-being in addition to the curing of illness and treating of sickness and injury, we have a long way to go.

Efficiency and the clinical perspective have long ruled the medical world and the facilities in which it operates. The result has been equipment, premises and attitudes that are not necessarily conducive to healing and helping in a way that makes lives better for the patients and staff.

Of course, money is always the deciding factor, and even if the will to change is there, the funding often isn’t. Private hospitals for the wealthy are in one sense widening this gap between themselves and what is offered to the less fortunate segments of population. But perhaps they can also serve as examples of what can be done with sufficient funding and perhaps some of the ideas can be adapted in less costly ways.

Sydney and Melbourne-based Bates Smart is a multidisciplinary design and architecture firm that has worked with Cabrini for more than 50 years. For this $120-million maternity and oncology hospital, they have strived to create an environment that invokes the patient’s overall sense of wellbeing rather than immersing them in the scary process of being sick, ill or injured. Every aspect of the design has been scrutinized from the perspective of the patient, rather than the perspective of the processes or equipment.

Natural materials, natural light and views of nature are all aspects of a healing environment that should not be impossible to integrate into all new hospitals, even those that don’t have the most lavish of budgets. Here those aspects are paramount as is the paneling that hides equipment, the technology that serves the patient, the overall comfort of the workspaces for staff and the flexibility of design features so that future changes can be accommodated.

One aspect of this 16,350 square metre (175989,935 sq. ft) hospital we appreciate is the integration of the radiotherapy facilities into the building so that cancer patients can receive integrated care in one location.

In contrast, life-saving health care is being provided all over the world in the most impoverished of circumstances, and the contribution of the doctors, nurses and staff will always be the most crucial and critical aspect of any care. In the overall scheme of healthcare, much can be learned from those tireless healers about how much can be done with very little. However, with benchmarks such as this private Cabrini hospital, perhaps there are aspects that will inform the entire field – and some of the learnings can help secure funding for improved health care everywhere. Tuija Seipell.

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Inexplicably, some aspects of the street-front retail scene seem forever doomed. Dry cleaners and laundry services are a perfect example of this. Yes, we have seen attempts in the past few decades of creating new concepts around this service by combining laundry with hair salons or coffee shops or other services.

But those attempts haven’t really changed the game. Most of us still pick up our dry cleaning from non-descript street-front locations, accepting the status quo of their appearance while also feeling guilty about the environmental damage that our habit of buying dry-clean-only clothes is causing.

Our hopes go up on the visual front each time we see a new entry in the category and especially when we see a concept where the value of the total experience has been understood.  

Montreal architects Gabrielle Rousseau and Philip Staszevski of Ivy Studio have created a minimalist environment for Le Nettoyeurs White’s 800 square-foot (74.3 sq.-metre) dry cleaning service shop in the Boucherville neighbourhood of Montreal on the south shore of the Lawrence River.

The Ivy Studio team, who started as Studio Object in 2015 and later became Ivy, draws inspiration for their work from Miami of the 90s, post-modernist America, Bauhaus, Mies and Eames.  

In the case of White’s, they are channelling a modern Parisian apartment with its classical features such as the high ceilings, white walls and mouldings, and with its sparse material palette.

The custom lighting fixtures by Montreal-based Lambert et Fils, the terracotta wall tiles and dark marble counters add to the feeling of old-world elegance to the shop.

The studio also designed the company’s cleaning factory creating a sleek, black-and-white industrial environment.

And we are not just encouraged by the environment of this shop but also by their pronouncement – on their yet-to-be-finished website Les Nettoyeurs Whites– of ‘ecology’ as part of their quality promise. Tuija Seipell

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Young, Kiev, Ukraine-based architect, Emil Dervish teams up with many interior designers on his commercial and residential projects.

Salon Odes in Odessa, Ukraine, is a particularly successful example of what happens when that crucial collaboration works well.

Odes is a result of a recent alliance between Dervish and local interior designer, Evgeni Bulatnikov.

This project, located in the vibrant, historic city of Odessa by the Black Sea, also benefited from the luxury of a large space, something not affordable – or even available – to beauty and hair salons in many larger cities.

At 131 square meters (1,410 sq. ft) Odes is airy and open yet each of the functions has its own designated area.

The clever use of light-grey drapery further increases the feel of openness and lightness, giving the impression of both available daylight and impermanence.

Smart, minimalist lighting fixtures and retro tiling add a sense of understated opulence. Mid-century modernist –inspired furnishings, and the sparse use of retro green and burnt-brick colour accents, complete the look.

We also love the little accessory trolleys whose big, white wheels bravely channel Alvar Aalto’s tea trolley 901 from 1936. Tuija Seipell.

Salon Odes is located in Odessa, Ukraine, str, Marshala Govorova 10/6

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Spring Place takes up three floors in the decidedly cool, former Verizon building in Manhattan’s Tribeca.

It is the same building where Spring Place’s umbrella company, Spring Studios, opened in 2015 and has since become home to New York Fashion Week, Tribeca Film Festival and the Independent Art Fair, among others.

As media outlets scrambled to define Spring Place when it launched they described it, for example, as a collaborative workspace and membership club, and a playground for the creative class that doubles as a workspace.

Spring Place founders, Alessandro Cajrati Crivelli, Francesco Costa and Imad Izemrane, were said to be aiming to provide a new hangout space for young high-rolling creative elites, particularly those in the top tier of the art, fashion, film and design worlds.

And when the epic 11,000 square-foot (1021 square metre) rooftop garden with views of Lower Manhattan’s West Side hosted its opening party, Leonardo DiCaprio and Victoria’s Secret models were among the 2,000 guests.

 More recently, former U.S. Vice President Joe Biden and Dr. Jill Biden were at Spring Place attending the launch party of daughter Ashley’s Livelihood hoodie line for online retailer, Gilt 

Spring Place’s fancily titled Cultural Programming Director is Hikari Yokoyama, entrepreneur, brand consultant, philanthropist and cofounder of the Paddle8 auction site.

Spring Place is, indeed, not a stuffy members ‘club but a massive 140,000 square-foot (13,000 square metre) flexible, high-end space spread out over three floors.

Its services include dedicated concierges and its facilities consist of conference rooms, a restaurant, a bar and lounge area, a music room and a lush, all-red private screening room. The fabulous rooftop can be rented for private events.

Spring Place’s membership is by application only and prices start with a $2,000 initiation fee and a $900 monthly minimum.

Spring Place has a cool back story as well. In 1996, Mark Loy opened Spring Studios in London’s Kentish Town in the former Winsor & Newton artists’ materials factory. It evolved from photography studios for rent into a multi-function studio, event space and full-blown creative agency serving the luxury and creative industries.

In 2015, Spring Studios opened in New York occupying 120,000 square feet (11,150 square metres) of space with the Spring Place membership club to launch later in the same building.

 To make the massive studio space into an impressive luxury environment that would meet the ever-changing needs of the creative, media and fashion industries, Loy engaged Italian-born architect Aldo Andreoli of AA Studio and real estate developer Alessandro Cajrati Crivelli of Real Estate Four who also developed Milan’s Zona Tortona and Howick Place in London.

The end result is a set of massive, bright column-less studios with 30 foot high (9.1 metres) ceilings, floor-to-ceiling windows, glass-fronted green rooms, mechanical black-out shades, private kitchens, enormous bathrooms and the cool rooftop garden.

And when the Spring Place opened some months later, the same key design elements were visible in both: stripped wood floors, blackened steel staircases, white walls and massive windows.

Spring Place’s membership is by application only. Tuija Seipell.

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Many fascinating stories of colonialism, manufacturing, selling, trading, culture, design and art make up the 170-year history of the iconic Dutch fabric design brand, Vlisco.

An exhibition “Vlisco 1:1 Un à Un” at the Helmond Museum recently celebrated the anniversary of the company by telling many of the colourful stories and in particular elaborating on and celebrating the link between Vlisco and Africa.

Founded in Helmond in 1846 by Pieter Fentener van Vlissingen, Vlisco merges Dutch and African art and design to produce objects and fabrics. Surprisingly, the first bright, graphic patterns of roller-printed wax fabrics popular in West and Central African culture have their origins in the Netherlands and Indonesia.

While the incredibly vibrant African textile patterns in themselves would have given the exhibition visitors’ much to look at, Vlisco’s creative director, Zara Atelj, gave the exhibition design team the kind of freedom that most commercially slanted exhibitions seldom have. They were asked to “Go crazy, please.”

In an article, former Vlisco designer and a key member of the exhibition team, Michiel Schuurman, was quoted as saying about the creative process that “I just like the whole maximalistic approach. Just a bunch of truly creative people hanging out, with no commercial hindrance, makes for a truly radical exhibition.”

The most radical and head-ache-inducing part of the exhibition were the ‘skins’ of designs by Schuurman with which the exhibition design firm Studio Harm Rensink covered the floors, walls and pillars.

The overall effect of the exhibition, that sheds light on an intriguing collision of colours and cultures, was delightfully overwhelming, immersive and informative. Tuija Seipell.

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In long-ago times, artists, sculptors, designers, architects – if they were supremely lucky – gained a benefactor, a royal patron, a life-saver and could stop starving.

But those patronages often came with tight restrictions and rules. Most of the time, you created what and how the patron wished.

And of course, the same goes on even today. A wealthy client, whether corporate or individual, wants things his or her way.

Three years ago, Parisian designer and architect Joseph Dirand, however, found himself in a situation quite unlike this.

An heiress of an Eastern European fortune just happened to have two large apartments on Paris’s Avenue Montaigne alongside the lavish emporiums of every luxury fashion brand in the world.

Dirand was presented with a more-or-less unlimited budget, complete creative freedom and two apartments totalling 6,500 square feet (600-plus square metres).

The 19th-century luxury space – while at least in theory a residence – didn’t even have to be resident-friendly or liveable. The patron has so far, apparently, visited once.

But she knew what she was doing when selecting Dirand. He is a star-designer and architect known for elegant store design for Balmain, Balenciaga, Givenchy, Chloe and Pucci as well as hotels, restaurants and residences globally. He has a supremely confident sense of what belongs and what doesn’t.

In this Paris apartment, his design sensibilities take a bold stand by setting a dramatic but highly minimalist stage and then filling it just so with a precise and determined collection of art, artefacts and materials.

It is characterized by the colour white with black definition, marble and wood, and a Dirand-curated art and furniture collection that would seem more than sufficient to earn the apartment the designation of a gallery. A dream assignment, we suspect, for both the patron and the designer. Tuija Seipell.

Photograph by Martin Morrell (via NYT)

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 Former pastry chef, food blogger and photographer, Justyna Kawiak, has applied her formidable talents to co-founding Nanan Patisserie (Cukiernia Nanan) at Kotlarska 32 in Wroclaw.

According to Polish food writers, locals have had to travel to Odette, Lukullus or Deseao in Warsaw, Umam in Gdansk or Gallery of Artistic Cakes in Krakow to satisfy their seriously sophisticated sweet palates and visual foodie needs. But not any more.

What makes the 14-seat Nanan additionally appealing is its branding and design, all handiwork of Wroclaw-based BUCK STUDIO, founded by architects Dominika and Pawel Buck.

Because the entire project – from concept and branding (visuals, staff outfits, signage, naming, packaging) to interior, furniture and fixtures design, and kitchen and workflow design– has come from BUCK STUDIO in cooperation with the Nanan partners, the concept hangs together so beautifully.

The marshmallow interiors, pink velvet sofas, curving forms, shiny brass, marble tops and chevroned oak floors all fit in. The oblong stadium shape repeats in the logo, doorways, counters and lighting fixtures, giving the space a coherent, soft, retro ambiance.

We suspect that it did not hurt this project that Dominica Buck, in addition to studying architecture and design in Wroclaw and London, also finished postgraduate studies in Food Design at the Academy of Fine Arts in in Łódz, Poland. Tuija Seipell

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Today, the name is synonymous with the double-decker macaroon of which Ladurée stores around the world sell more than 15,000 per day. The brand now includes five segments from macaroons and chocolates to beauty, bath and body products.

Paris-based designer India Mahdavi has recently completed an entire Ladurée environment in the Four Seasons Hotel at the Quai des Bergues in Geneva in the hotel building that can trace its history back to 1834.

The patisserie, restaurant and tea room have a delicately appointed ambiance with their slightly faded hues of cold pink and moss green.

The checkered floor and white accents anchor the spaces and help them avoid the pitfalls of overly prissy and fussy. The round shape repeats itself in the furniture, lighting and corners echoing the softness and roundness of the macaroon. Tuija Seipell.

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