Table of contents for March/April 2017 in Dwell

The vacation home of Martin and Harriet Roth lies on Otnabog Lake, near the St. John River, in the tiny hamlet of Queenstown, New Brunswick. Although just an hour from Fredericton, the province’s capital, the place feels exceedingly removed and is sparsely populated (about 100 inhabitants). But despite its isolation, the decision to build there was easy. The land belongs to Harriet’s family—it’s where she spent her childhood summers—and the couple love the 180-degree change it provides from their hectic lives in Berlin. Their goal was to erect a simple wooden house that took its cue from agricultural vernacular. “There are so many beautiful barns in this area—they’re more like sculpture,” says Martin, who recently retired as director of the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, where the couple lived…

“ Between the chickens and my visitors, I don’t stop working.” LOLO MAURON, PROPRIETOR Talk about a man cave. Lolo Mauron, a 92-yearold bachelor, has filled his den in the south of France with vintage cars and tools. And his digs are literally that: caves carved by the Romans into the limestone hills outside the town of Saint-Rémy-de-Provence. “I’m French to the tips of my fingernails,” Lolo declares, running his fingers through a thick shock of white hair. His authenticity and eccentric habitat entice tourists to venture a little farther down the road from the Saint Paul de Mausole Monastery— where Vincent van Gogh was hospitalized for a year—for a “meal at the farm,” as the sign advertises. Lolo runs a table d’hôte, or informal restaurant, where he cooks meals…

Keep up with the build at dwell.com/bridgehouse When completed, Bridge House will stretch 200 feet across the grounds, straddling a brook in an architectural maneuver that gives the project its name. When principal Dan Brunn purchased the property, his initial plan had been to renovate the existing home. The seeds of Bridge House were sown, however, when he visited the Breakers in Newport, Rhode Island. Though the Italian Renaissance-style mansion that was the Vanderbilt family’s summer retreat is a far cry from the modern profile of Bridge House, it sparked an idea for Brunn. “I fell in love with the motor court and entry,” says Brunn. “Back at the site, I started with a motor court, and the bridge evolved because of the structure. I could go right over the…

The best public art draws people in with a bit of razzle-dazzle, then invites them to meditate on something more. Cloud House, an installation by artist Matthew Mazzotta at Farmers Park in Springfield, Missouri, offers visitors a very special attraction: the miracle of rain. The “house,” which looks like a country porch on a perpetually overcast day, is really a rain-harvesting system with an interactive twist. When showers storm in, a gutter system on the gabled tin roof directs water into an underground storage tank. Reclining in the house’s rocking chairs triggers a pump that brings the water up, via pipes in the walls, into a large acrylic cloud protruding from the roof. Water then drizzles through the cloud’s perforated underside back onto the building, illustrating in an instant the…

I really enjoyed Ron Henderson’s essay in the January/February issue on the “best” tree, the honey locust. Having had the good fortune of attending the College of Architecture at Illinois Institute of Technology, I can assure you that it was invigorating to spend countless hours drawing, with a lead pencil, the pure aesthetics of the honey locust. Years later, while I was selling modern buildings in Chicago, buyers were impressed when I pointed out that properties with the dappled light, minimal maintenance, and noble structural aesthetic of the honey locust were worth far more. —Jeff Laird, Estancia, New Mexico Great new start. I normally look at Dwell a little and put it back on the newsstand, but not this time. Much cleaner layout, less clutter, more in-depth reporting, more people…

“I wanted to see if we could make a museum that wasn’t about just making another structure, or mimicking the architectural history of Washington, but to see if we could introduce another narrative that was what I call a kind of bedfellow, but of a different trajectory. “The forest region in West Africa produced incredible artisans and craftsmen. The most notable were the Yoruba in Benin, who for thousands of years created incredilble art. By the first century they’d become great masters of naturalistic casting and work, but chose to reject it just before colonization and embarked on an incredible series of abstractions. This work, which people sometimes think is primitive, actually happened after the Naturalistic period. The modernism of the continent, you can argue, happened 500 years ago, and…

We know how much thought and effort it takes to realize a project, and we want dwell.com to be the place where you can share your ideas. We’ve built a feature that allows you to seamlessly add your home to the site by uploading images and information. You can also discuss the challenges, victories, and discoveries you’ve experienced along the way. Find the Design Professional You Need We want to make it easy for you to connect with like-minded professionals who share the Dwell sensibility. Join us on dwell.com, where we’ve created a dedicated section for discovering service providers in your area, whether you’re in the market for an architect, a photographer, a landscape designer, or a lighting manufacturer (among others!). Interested in listing your own business? Visit dwell.com/pro to…

When Tom Conrad, VP of Product at Snapchat, and his wife, Kate Imbach, a writer and documentary filmmaker, went house hunting back in 2010, the first place they saw was also the last—the top unit of a spanking new spec building in the Noe Valley neighborhood of San Francisco. “Architecturally, the house was nothing special,” says Tom. “We jokingly dubbed it ‘contractor contemporary.’ But it had qualities that are hard to find in San Francisco.” In a town littered with Victorians, the 3,300-square-foot, two-level flat was airy and open and flooded with light. “And even though it’s not on a hill, there were actual views. We weren’t staring into the side of someone’s kitchen,” adds Tom. “So we grabbed it.” Plus, they loved the neighborhood, a sunny enclave that kisses…

A 1953 modern home by Curtis and Davis in New Orleans’s Lakeshore neighborhood proved too tempting to pass up for veteran renovators Maury Strong, a film producer with an A-list client roster, and Ron Caron, a public school teacher. But the couple soon discovered that the flood-damaged structure with multiple sloppy renovations was a bigger challenge than they had imagined. With the help of a team led by Wayne Troyer and Natan Diacon-Furtado of studioWTA and the original architectural plans, they created a modern oasis to last a lifetime. “ We got tired of moving. We thought, Let’s go home, but let’s bring the places that we love back to New Orleans.’ ” MAURY STRONG, RESIDENT Maury Strong: I want fresh blood when it comes to houses. Ron and I…

“ In theory I could have thrashed the inside to insert a modern space. But I decided not to because the old details are too beautiful.” JENS MARTIN SKIBSTED, RESIDENT With its idyllic vistas and abundant greenways, a lakeside hamlet just a half-hour drive north of Copenhagen seems farther from the heart of the city than it is. Which is precisely why, one weekend three years ago, Jens Martin Skibsted, a founder of Danish brands KiBiSi and Biomega, and his wife, Naomi, a fashion entrepreneur from Zimbabwe, decided to purchase a waterfront retreat there. Originally completed in 1897, the home was built by an anonymous Norwegian carpenter who introduced a taste for wood-frame houses with black siding in a region where neoclassical white-brick mansions with glazed black terra-cotta tile roofs…

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Mornings in the Snyder-Burns household are brighter than most. The master bedroom and bathroom share an open plan, with the shower tucked inside a glass cube with a skylight above. Unusually for a narrow building of this vintage, the space is so bathed in sunlight that resident Lauren Snyder says it’s like showering outdoors, despite being in the heart of Bedford- Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. “It’s probably not for everyone, but it works for us,” she says. Lauren is the owner of The Primary Essentials, a home goods store in nearby Boerum Hill that stocks works by many craft-based designers, including ceramic artist Helen Levy, weaver Doug Johnston, and furniture studio Fort Standard, to name a few. Her husband, Keith Burns, is an architect who worked with the firms ODA and REX…

Cover James Cutler cutler-anderson.com 25 Color Unleashed Bretelle chair by Luca Martorano and Georg Muehlmann for Georg Muehlmann georgmuehlmann.it Cutting boards by Muller Van Severen for valerie_objects valerie-objects.com Magic lamps by Isabelle Gilles and Yann Poncelet for Colonel moncolonel.fr 04 chair by Ateliers J&J ateliersjetj.com Bold chair by Moustache moustache.fr Lazy Susan by Maison Dada maisondada.com Diamond pendant by Sebastian Scherer for Neo/Craft neocraft.com Grid armchair by Pool for Petite Friture petitefriture.com Hal pendant by Guillaume Delvigne for La Chance lachance.fr Loop chair by Fred Rieffel for Rodet rodet-home.net Twisted jug by Gabriele Rosa for Alessi alessi.com Kama stool by Le point D lepointd.com 30 The Life Fair Het Nieuwe Instituut, Museumpark 25, Rotterdam thelifefair.hetnieuweinstituut.nl 34 Barn Raising Modersohn & Freiesleben Architects mofrei.de Structural and civil engineering by Niehues Winkler…