August 14, 2012
Published by Daily AD at August 14, 2012
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Showroom Special

Christopher Guy, the Florida-based luxury home-furnishings brand, recently put its glamorous stamp on an expansive new flagship in the center of West Hollywood. Designed by founder Christopher Guy Harrison, the 10,000-square-foot bright-white space sho...
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August 14, 2012
Published by Daily AD at August 14, 2012
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Assouline publishes a vibrant examination of French modernist Fernand Leger

A figure of boundless curiosity and creative brio, French painter, sculptor, and filmmaker Fernand Léger blithely moved between abstraction and figuration, sidestepping the debates that stirred the 20th-century avant-garde. Identified as a Cubist earl...
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August 13, 2012
Published by Daily AD at August 13, 2012
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Beijing’s CCTV building turns the skyscraper on its side

The CCTV building may well feel familiar. Long an eye-catching presence on Beijing’s skyline, it broke ground back in 2004. Still, that hardly makes its completion—in May, after eight years and one devastating fire—any less significant. Designed ...
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August 10, 2012
Published by Daily AD at August 10, 2012
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Gold Medal Buildings

Gymnastics? Check. Pole-vaulting? Check. Architecture? Architecture? Believe it or not, that field—as well as town planning, “mixed sculpturing,” compositions for orchestra, and various other creative subcategories—was part of the Summer Olympi...
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August 10, 2012
Published by Daily AD at August 10, 2012
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Burning Genius

Innovative British designer Thomas Heatherwick may be known largely to the cognoscenti, but his latest creation recently caught the attention of an estimated 900 million viewers around the world—the 16-ton Olympic Cauldron, a massive, multiarmed scul...
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August 10, 2012
Published by Grandfather_Clocks at August 10, 2012
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Big Ben Clock Tower as Elizabeth Tower

The story has been reported, coinciding roughly with the Olympics, that the Big Ben Clock Tower in London will soon be renamed Elizabeth Tower in honor […]
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August 9, 2012
Published by Daily AD at August 9, 2012
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The return of a dramatic 1970s decorating trend: uplights

In case you haven’t noticed, there’s been a revival of all things 1970s lately—lighting by Venini, photography by Willy Rizzo, furniture by Pierre Cardin and Guy de Rougemont. Fashion has been dipping into the disco era for quite some time, and l...
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August 9, 2012
Published by Daily AD at August 9, 2012
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George Lucas, Roseanne Barr, Richard Meier, Susan Sarandon, and others’ favorite museums

View SlideshowIn a former potato field in Water Mill, New York, the endless roof of what appears to be a horse barn the size of an aircraft hangar recently emerged. It’s the new Parrish Art Museum, designed by Herzog & de Meuron and set to o...
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August 3, 2012
Published by Daily AD at August 3, 2012
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Curtain Call

Curtains, however pretty, have a largely utilitarian purpose: to control light and soften the architecture of a window. For 20th-century style icon Pauline de Rothschild (1908-76)—an American fashion designer turned hostess of one of France’s great...
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August 3, 2012
Published by Daily AD at August 3, 2012
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Introducing AD’s new garden blog

Architectural Digest’s recent feature about fashion designer Oscar de la Renta’s garden in the Dominican Republic (“Paradise Found,” July 2012) was the perfect welcome as I took on my new role as the magazine’s contributing garden editor. Almost three decades ago, it was Oscar’s late wife, Françoise, who introduced me to the New York publishing world, taking a risk on this just-off-the-boat garden writer and sending me on my first serious magazine assignment.

My debut was for House & Garden, where she was an editor, and for it I flew to the Dominican Republic, on my way to an elegant, orchid-filled paradise in Santiago de los Caballeros that belonged to the fashion designer’s friend Gustavo Tavares. My introduction to international reportage and etiqueta tropical was a beautiful luncheon in the open-air dining room of Gustavo’s house, Villa Pancha. The Vanda orchids outside were 30 years old and ten feet high. Cattleya, Ascocenda, and Renanthera orchids decorated huge tree ferns, a winding tunnel was draped with Thunbergia, and a tropical jardín blanco brimmed with snowy Rex jasmine. And there I sat with Oscar and Gustavo, in the midst of fresh gardens and crisp linens, grimy and wilted in two-day-old clothes. (The airline had lost my bags. Some things about my work never change.) “I will have something sent over,” Oscar offered. “What are you? A size four?”

 

I have not been a size four since I was age four, but it was the nicest thing he could have said to a nervous neophyte. A bit embarrassed, I looked down at the table only to see an enormous white vegetal disk—almost as big as the salad plate—being set before me. Sensing my wonder, Oscar declared, “Well, Gustavo, these are likely the largest hearts of palm any of us will ever see.” And turning to me, he pronounced the most kind and generous editorial advice anyone could ever give: “Never be afraid to ask questions. You’ll learn so much.”

 

Villa Pancha was my launchpad for a career of worldwide assignments, always in gardens, always with wonderful people. Nine years after that memorable lunch, a bit of star-studded serendipity took me back to Gustavo’s home. I was asked to scout locations and write for the 1993 PBS television miniseries Gardens of the World, hosted by Audrey Hepburn. (I wrote for the companion book, too.) The series producers had decided I would make the trip of a lifetime and travel the globe in search of the world’s most important and beautiful tropical gardens. Apparently they had dug up that old House & Garden article and decided I was an expert.

 

The trip was an astonishing feat. Hard to imagine now, but without the Internet, cell phones, or digital equipment of any kind, we explored ancient and modern gardens and prepared the way for Audrey. Our locations were high in remote mountains of Sri Lanka, in urban Singapore, among the green interior regions of Bali, in a garden in Venezuela that dated from the 1590s, and—circling back around the globe—the Tavares garden in the Dominican Republic. Gardens of the World won an Emmy, but no one realized this would be Audrey’s final on-camera appearance. Yet she left a legacy to all who love gardens: In a seven-minute trailer, the actress spoke beautifully about the age-old urge to create, explore, and enjoy the most ephemeral of all the arts.

 

For me, the garden is any place that’s outside, even when the outside has crept back into the house in the form of greenhouses, conservatories, courtyards, and the like. Curious? Wonderful. Stayed tuned. If you want more details regarding any garden element, designer, landscape architect, or plant you see in Architectural Digest, send me an e-mail. Your queries will drive our choice of topics. Remember: Never be afraid to ask questions.

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