Hotels are no longer just places to lay one’s head. Like most hospitality spaces these days, they’ve become multifunctional environments comprising an ever-expanding set of services. Catering to different types of clientele—travelers taking in all that a locale has to offer; frequent businesspeople requiring the essentials and replicated creature comforts in equal measure; locals simply looking for a new third place to relax or have a drink—these destinations now incorporate extensive food and beverage options, expansive coworking set-ups, fitness centers, playrooms, and increasingly, lobby ‘living rooms.’ These, in and of themselves multifunctional venues, are increasingly programmed as porous buffers, softening the transition between the street outside and the accommodations on the floors above.

In a growing push to make do with what’s already in place (adaptive reuse), long-established hotels like Lower Manhattan’s Hyatt Union Square are being retooled along these lines. Multicity interiors firm LEGEARD STUDIO recently revamped its palatial, Fourth Avenue–facing lobby and transformed it into a public-facing neighborhood salon. Answering all the requirements of such an environment—an easily identifiable reception desk, an ample variety of seating areas, etc.—the retrofit marries past and present, rooting the space in the history of the site while also foretelling its future.

Nearby Union Square is, for many New Yorkers, a central axis for the city, straddling the edge of downtown and uptown. Its cultural history is nothing to scoff at, either. Andy Warhol maintained his Factory here. The storied Parsons School of Design is nearby. When not home to a twice-weekly farmers’ market (a holiday village during the season), its circuitous plaza is the site of major public gatherings. New York’s extensive array of diversely defined yet ever-evolving districts unfolds from here in all directions.

Enacting a complete gut renovation of the two-story interior, the firm reintroduced elements that were familiar and others that were new. Hints of Palm Springs Tropical Modernism intermix with nods to the restrained yet warm Milanese style of the same mid-20th-century period. A bespoke amoebic-form patterned tile floor lays the groundwork for a number of partially contained alcoves, breaking what would otherwise be an overly imposing and monotonous singular void. The time of shocking and awing visitors and guests into submission has passed.

Still, the richly veined wooden reception desk takes pride of place. A stained glass wall, geometrically composed like the floor, accentuates its importance but also suggests what else is yet to be uncovered. The Bauhaus-inspired backdrop takes in and refracts natural and indirect artificial light in unexpected ways. Up ahead hang paper lanterns reminiscent of the Akari lamps imagined by Isamu Noguchi—a for-too-long unsung, polymathic creative hero of New York City.

The adjoining guest lounge takes on more intimate proportions. Wrapped in wood-paneled walls, the space is defined by 1970s low-slung sofa pits. Playful rugs and polished vintage accents layer in. Verdant greenery, encased in elevated linear planters, carries across the entire lobby space.

The cocktail lounge toward the rear is anchored by soaring columns encased in diamond-patterned woodwork. Murano glass–inspired sconces are subtle touches tying everything together. Both banquettes emerge with iconic Sergio Mazza Alfa lamps as focal points. The main bar features a Charlotte Perriand–inspired bottle shelf and a large slab of Verde Antigua marble. A ripple-pattern plaster relief extends across the adjoining wall. Glistening with its large Venetian chandelier by day, the bright cocktail lounge turns into a sultry, dimly lit haunt by night.

With all of this expertly cohered, the lobby is both nostalgic—romantically dramatic, like the legendary Palladium nightclub that once stood around the corner—and contemporary in its human-scale accommodation.

To see this and other works by the firm, visit legeardstudio.com.

Photography courtesy of Legeard Studio.

Memory is powerful––a place and time long ago can surface unexpectedly, stirring something immediate no matter where you are. Refreshing and bright, Casa EME begins with exactly that kind of recognition: a fleeting familiarity tied to another life, another moment. For Manuel––a design and cooking enthusiast––the apartment evoked the spirit of Madrid de los Austrias, its layered history embedded in the surrounding fabric. Set within a corner building overlooking Plaza Mayor and its constellation of landmarks, the home opens outward almost theatrically, its five large windows framing the city like a living backdrop. A quiet return to humanism, the project reveals how careful delineation, rather than excess, can create more with less.

At first glance, the space reads as a series of chromatic fields: full-height bursts of red, blue, and yellow that infuse the apartment with both clarity and personality. Scarlet doors swing open in a butterfly-like gesture, extending the interior toward the street and reinforcing the home’s connection to Madrid’s historic identity. Here, gon architects channel a distinctly Bauhaus-adjacent sensibility, painting with a wide brush, using color as a spatial device. Rooms are not enclosed so much as defined, their boundaries articulated through hue, texture, and rhythm rather than walls alone.

Spaces, after all, are meant to work with us by supporting the cadence of daily life. Whether we want to cook, host, rest, or simply drift, the home should accommodate those shifts intuitively. Casa EME embraces this philosophy through a reorganization of the original plan, once fragmented and illogical, into something far more fluid and legible. The intervention resists demolition in favor of recalibration: a sliding of programs across the existing footprint until a new domestic order emerges. Starkly angular yet ambitiously unpretentious, the apartment allows each element to operate quietly, with no single gesture demanding attention over another.

At the center, the kitchen now occupies its rightful place as the social heart of the home. It’s a space for gathering as much as for cooking, where Manuel’s meals become part of the architecture itself. And it’s framed by soft, integrated cabinetry anchored by the preserved wooden flooring, which runs continuously throughout the apartment like a material memory. This decision––to retain the original IPE wood floor in its entirety––grounds the project in time, allowing the marks of use and age to remain visible, imperfect, and alive.

Moments of contrast sharpen the experience. A vivid yellow corridor compresses the entry sequence, transforming a once narrow and unresolved threshold into a deliberate hinge between public and private space. Nearby, a blue-clad volume – its textured surface subtly improving acoustics – anchors the living area while acting as both object and divider. These gestures operate almost as spatial binaries: compressed and open, warm and cool, saturated and neutral.

There is great clarity to transitions where shifts in color and material signal movement through the home. Yet the effect is anything but rigid. Dark wood floors soften the palette, grounding the more saturated interventions in a sense of continuity and warmth. The result is a careful balance between precision and ease, where design feels considered but never overdetermined.

Some of the most compelling details are the quietest. Tile from the bathroom extends outward into adjacent spaces, deliberately crossing its expected boundary as a visible trace of what once was. Rather than conceal the apartment’s past, the architects allow it to remain legible – a subtle rupture in the otherwise continuous floor that marks time as much as it does space. In the bedroom, this ceramic footprint reappears alongside green-toned surfaces that evoke an almost exterior landscape, softening the transition between rest and ritual.

Storage, too, dissolves into the architecture. Long, unbroken white walls conceal closets and even the entrance to the bathroom, maintaining a sense of visual calm while accommodating the practicalities of daily life. Elsewhere, furnishings float freely within the plan – a table, a sofa, shelving – forming a loose constellation rather than a fixed hierarchy.

The foyer, like the rest of Casa EME, resists conventional definitions of boundary. Angled geometries and shifting planes guide movement rather than dictate it, allowing the apartment to unfold as a sequence of experiences rather than a series of rooms. Transitions occur without doors, mediated instead by changes in color, texture, and light––a choreography of thresholds that engages sight, touch, and perception.

With a touch of roguery and a confident use of color, each element stands distinctly on its own while contributing to a larger harmony.

To learn more about Casa EME and other projects by the studio, visit gonarchitects.com.

Photography courtesy of gon architects.

Branded residences have become the luxury hotel industry’s favorite revenue strategy. Most of these projects share a familiar formula—take a glass tower in a growing luxury market, attach a name that travelers recognize, furnish it to a standard that photographs well, and charge a 30% premium for the badge. The result, in most cases, is real estate dressed in hospitality clothing—a product that borrows a brand’s reputation without absorbing its design philosophy.

Aman operates on a different frequency. When the brand sold a penthouse at its Aman Residences Tokyo—the unit reportedly closed at approximately 30 billion yen, around $225 million—the price reflected something more complex than square footage at the top of Japan’s tallest residential tower. The 16,000-square-foot residence achieved 44 million yen per tsubo, far surpassing previous records for high-end properties in Tokyo. That figure made it the most expensive apartment transaction in Japanese history, and it did so because Aman has spent decades building a design language so specific to place that its residences function as extensions of a spatial philosophy rather than merchandise.

Amangiri’s new Six-Bedroom Villa, designed by Marwan Al-Sayed of MASASTUDIO, extends that same conviction into the Utah desert. The first of 12 private residences planned for the resort’s Canyon Country site, the villa unfolds over approximately 12,000 square feet across nine acres. Conceived as a fully serviced private compound rather than a singular dwelling, the residence accommodates up to 18 guests across six suites, supported by dedicated staff quarters that allow hospitality to operate in congruence.

Al-Sayed was one of three architects—alongside Rick Joy and Wendell Burnette—who conceived the original Amangiri resort in 2009, and his return to this landscape carries a continuity that most branded residence projects cannot claim. The original resort was designed as a contemporary interpretation of the region’s Indigenous architectural traditions, sited against a low entrada sandstone formation. That same logic persists here: low-lying volumes emerge from the terrain with a kind of geological inevitability, less placed than revealed.

Oculus skylights positioned throughout the residence draw the desert sky inward, replicating the narrow apertures through which canyon light travels. Glass planes frame the surrounding rock formations and capture the shifting light across the day, but the oculi give the interior an intimacy that floor-to-ceiling glazing alone cannot. Materials—stone, concrete, and wood—are rendered in a tonal palette that mirrors the desert itself, allowing light to do the expressive work rather than surface treatment.

Nine acres of Southern Utah wilderness give the villa sufficient land to dissolve the boundary between built and natural. A 118-foot swimming pool stretches along the horizon line, while a series of outdoor dining courts, fire features, and shaded lounges extend daily life into the open air. Walled gardens and sheltered terraces create a calibrated sequence of exposure and refuge, allowing the building’s open-plan volumes to feel continuous with the landscape beyond.

Inside, the program reflects a hybrid between private residence and resort infrastructure. In addition to the six guest suites, the villa includes expansive living and dining areas, a private spa, fitness room, and multiple wellness-focused spaces that echo Amangiri’s broader ethos of retreat and restoration. A full-service kitchen supports private chefs, while discreet back-of-house circulation ensures that service remains present but unseen—a choreography that distinguishes hospitality at Aman from conventional luxury living.

What emerges is a system that collapses architecture, service, and landscape into a singular experience. Where many branded residences rely on recognition, Aman relies on recognition of place. The Six-Bedroom Villa calibrates itself to the land, allowing scale, light, and material to register the vastness of Canyon Country without spectacle.

View more information on this and other properties by the lifestyle brand, visit aman.com.

Photography courtesy of Aman.

An agricultural business has different requirements than a typical corporation centered in an urban setting. This can present a unique set of challenges to designers when they envision an alignment of operations and staff in headquarters that support a range of functions.

When Impepinable Studio was tapped to design a hub for seed processing company Agrosemillas, the team embraced certain constraints and looked to the landscape and elements of manufacturing for inspiration. “The site sits in an industrial environment, so rather than introducing a foreign language, we wanted to work with what was already there—materials, scale, and atmosphere,” says Gabriela Barrera, co-founder of Impepinable Studio.

Located in El Peral, Spain, the complex includes more than 48,000-square feet of new production and storage facilities, built with the help of local craftsmen who were responsible for metalwork, carpentry, and plumbing, which shaped the zones that were made to withstand the dust-heavy surroundings.

Four reused shipping containers rest on a concrete plinth shared with the adjacent warehouses. Skylights bring soft glow into the interior, while the north-facing orientation of the open planes ensures a steady flow of illumination. The green and yellow brand colors of Agrosemillas pop against the gray facade punctuated by circular portals. These windows are protected by manually-operated shutters that act almost like basic levers, which create an open or closed feel as required.

Three bands organize the plan in a grid style. The first is dedicated to open workspaces, another to service areas, and the third section holds meeting rooms and laboratory facilities. Entrances are separated according to logistical flows to maximize efficiency. Oak cladding and furniture offer a warm complement to steel frames. Roof surfaces incorporate strips for experimental crops, which physically link research, fabrication, and architecture within a single framework.

This busy center houses its own infrastructure that transcends typology. “It was less about designing an office and more about rethinking what a workplace in this context could be. That mindset gave us the freedom to explore a playful approach,” Barrera notes. “The project is spatially rich while remaining extremely simple and ordered.”

To see this and other works by the firm, visit impepinable.studio.

Photography courtesy of DEL RIO BANI.

In interior design, stylistic fads come and go. More often than not, these trends reflect changing tastes and fleeting—dare we say vapid—cultural phenomena, but rarely anything else. With our homes, offices, and ever-fluid civic spaces forming the backdrop of our lives, shouldn’t these environments be conceived with more substantiated intention? Shouldn’t the right acoustic or lighting plan supersede the perceived “need” for gimmicky flex? And why can’t these essential considerations be delivered with visual appeal still in mind?

A new report from John Hopkins University’s International Arts + Mind Lab (IAM Lab) re-assesses the serious functional value of aesthetics in not just supporting mental and physical health but also better facilitating individual creativity and interpersonal interaction; a condition in short supply these days.

Released earlier this year, the Intentional Space Roadmap is an in-depth, multivalent scientific yet accessibly written study that ultimately calls for the establishment of a more well-rounded interior design field coined Neuroarchitecture, one that incorporates the indispensable expertise of psychology. It unpacks how light, sound, texture, form, and natural shape (Biophilia) implicitly influence how we feel, think, heal, and connect with others.

“We are in, or move through, spaces every moment of our lives, and we now know that our environments have powerful effects on our physical and mental health,” said Susan Magsamen, Executive Director of the IAM Lab. “The importance and momentum of this work have never been more critical. From individual wellbeing to community impact, across every sector of society, the implications are profound. Intentional spaces represent a cost-effective, life-changing opportunity to improve health, resilience, innovation and quality of life at scale. This is not a dream or wishful thinking. There are organizations already putting these ideas into practice and leading the way and we are offering a roadmap and resources to accelerate this movement.”

The report isn’t merely a defense of this fresh proposition—one rooted in long-refined strategies—but also an actionable framework. Sections self-reflectively outline the research involved; the disciplinary obstacles still in place that stymie the adoption of this more versatile and actually holistic mindset; and recommendations to get past these limitations. Overall, it calls for a more cross-disciplinary and collaborative approach.

Some of the challenges identified include the lack of universal terminology, access to applied evidence, and regulatory incentive. Incomplete training and financial constraints—the speed at which we expect projects to be carried out to meet the bottom-line of increasingly hurried economic realities—are other more obvious hurdles. The onus is both on design practitioners and academic researchers, both of which tend to keep their intuitive and intellectual expertise siloed within their respective fields.

Some of the strategic “tools” outlined centers on dissolving these boundaries, making research and the values of neuroaesthetics more integral to design education for one. When it comes to the actual practice of interior design, an evidence-based strategy could more closely take into account the use of a specific space; its role is helping individuals focus; create memories; regulate emotions; ideate with little constraint or distraction; and have more pleasing—calming—sensory experiences.

Perhaps the most important aspect for our still capitalist society is to draw clear links between the economic value—efficiency and cost-effectiveness—of this methodology; the idea that spaces that are more holistically designed along this framework will help its inhabitants/users live and perform better.

To further evolution, and perhaps be more answerable to the environment, architecture and design need to harness the virtues of the scientific method.

To learn more about IAM Lab, visit artsandmindlab.

Photography courtesy of John Hopkins University.

The stone houses of Westchester’s early 20th-century neighborhoods carry a particular material candor – their masonry is pulled from the same geological bed as the landscape around them, their permanence a direct expression of the region’s character. Ravi Raj’s renovation of a Mount Airy house in Croton-on-Hudson treats that original fabric as the project’s main thesis, organizing every intervention around it while carefully reconciling past and present into a cohesive whole.

Local flagstone sourced to match the existing masonry extends and reinforces the base of the house, preserving its historic texture while subtly expanding its footprint. In contrast, white lap siding wraps the upper floors, introducing a lighter, more contemporary expression that distinguishes new from old without disrupting their dialogue. A 1980s addition that had previously fragmented the roofline was reworked entirely—its massing clarified through a new upper level, steeply pitched roof, and dormers that restore a sense of formal continuity while nodding to the region’s vernacular traditions.

Entry at the below-grade level establishes the interior palette immediately. A foyer and adjacent mudroom unfold in textured limestone flooring and wood-paneled walls, grounding the experience in materials that echo the surrounding terrain. From here, circulation rises toward the main level, where a sculptural staircase—Raj’s reinterpretation of a former spiral—acts as both connective tissue and spatial anchor. Its presence is less about movement alone and more about orientation, framing calibrated views of the stone boulders behind the house and reinforcing a continuous dialogue between interior and landscape.

Curved thresholds carry this spatial logic through the plan, softening transitions and introducing a measured rhythm between rooms. The main level unfolds from the stair into a sequence of living spaces—a galley kitchen, great room, and primary suite—each tied together through this language of subtle curvature. In the great room, a gently sloped fireplace and an arched portal over built-in seating extend the motif, balancing formal restraint with moments of permeability that open outward to the wooded site beyond.

The primary suite holds the residence’s temporal layering within two adjacent rooms. In the bedroom, exposed original rafters—painted a deep green—retain the weight and memory of the earliest structure, paired with a restored fireplace clad in dark soapstone. The material’s matte density reinforces a sense of historical grounding. This is set in deliberate contrast to the adjoining bathroom, where marble hex tile and white lacquered wood wainscoting introduce brightness and refinement, articulating a quieter, more contemporary sensibility.

Beyond the interior, the project extends its architectural language into the landscape through a series of outdoor interventions. An elevated deck off the great room, anchored by a burnished metal firepit, and a bluestone patio off the kitchen with a built-in barbecue create multiple points of occupation, allowing the house to engage the site across seasons.

Throughout, a restrained palette of natural finishes—lacquered wood, honed marble, soft textiles, and custom built-ins—contributes to an atmosphere that feels both timeless and deliberate. A once-disparate structure becomes unified through material continuity, calibrated interventions, and a clear architectural narrative that bridges inheritance and inhabitation.

To see this and other projects by the studio, visit ravirajarchitect.com.

Photography courtesy of Sarah Elliott.

From home interiors to fashion runways, a particular kind of quiet luxury has come to define the past decade––restrained palettes, hushed materials, and statement pieces that don’t do much more than whisper. What happens when calm is no longer found in color’s absence, but instead in its abundance? This joyful Long Island home offers a different answer: joy as a design principle, color as a reset.

Set atop a hill and surrounded by old-growth trees, this 12,000-square-foot contemporary home was originally conceived as a study in minimalism—clean lines, sharp angles, and an all-white interior that mirrored the prevailing aesthetic of restraint. But for its owners, a dynamic family deeply rooted in New York’s culture, that neutrality felt less like sanctuary and more like silence. What they wanted instead was something far more radical: a home that radiates happiness.

Working with a blank canvas and full creative freedom, Shanna Gatanis Design Studio leaned into a subversive approach, transforming the stark shell into a saturated, high-energy environment that still manages to feel deeply restorative. The result is not chaos, but calibration, and a declaration that joy can be just as grounding as stillness.

Bright hues are uplifting with the power to positively affect changes in mood. Color, in this sense, becomes less about decoration and more about emotional infrastructure and a tool for resilience. Here, that philosophy is embedded into every space.

The palette pulls from 1990s hip hop ephemera, retro sports graphics, and the chromatic buzz of a recycled Nike sneaker floor—the project’s unlikely starting point. Blues anchor the home, providing a sense of depth and continuity, while saturated reds, yellows, and greens move through the interiors with rhythm to create visual beats that energize without overwhelming.

It’s a deliberate rejection of “chromophobia”—that quiet cultural fear of color that has long dictated what is considered “tasteful.” Instead, this house leans into what color does best: reflecting mood, amplifying joy, and even inviting participation.

The home’s delicate balance between vibrancy and excess lies in its material intelligence. Warm woods, terrazzo, colored glass, and lacquered surfaces create layers of tactility, while sheer fabrics and rounded, 1970s-inspired forms soften the intensity. The effect is immersive but palatable for daily life.

Programmatically, the house unfolds as both a playground and retreat. Open entertainment zones flow into more intimate family spaces, while amenities—a basketball court, music lounge, pools, and a convertible outdoor room—extend the idea of home into something experiential.

Moments of delight are everywhere, often quite literally. A Lego-inspired fireplace rises as a sculptural focal point. A graffiti mural weaves together Brooklyn, Biggie, and basketball into a visual love letter to the family’s roots. While these gestures could be read as whimsical, they become markers of identity, memory, and belonging.

That sense of personal narrative is what ultimately elevates the project beyond spectacle to autobiography. Perhaps calm isn’t always found in muting the world, but in meeting it in full technicolor. And to do that means dialing up the saturation.

To see this and other works by the unabashed design studio, visit shannagatanis.com.

Photography courtesy of nickjohnsoninteriors.com.

Architecture, when reframed, is about space rather than walls; it does not enclose, but reveals. The Garden Apartment by Aranda\Lasch, reimagines the domestic interior as a calibrated aperture: a sequence of frames, thresholds, and volumes that attune everyday life to light, landscape, and time.

At the center of this Lower East Side (LES) project is a near-mythical condition for New York living—a double-wide private garden. Rather than treating this as an amenity to be accessed, the architects position it as the project’s conceptual and spatial anchor. The apartment home becomes, in their words, “a frame for the oasis outside,” a device through which the shifting outdoor atmosphere is continuously registered from within.

This framing is not metaphorical alone. A newly introduced double-height volume operates as the primary viewing device, pulling daylight deep into what was once a compact, compartmentalized plan. And the vertical expansion increases perceived space by reorganizing daily rituals around the daylight void itself. Dining, gathering, and rest unfold within a tall, luminous chamber where the presence of the garden is constant, even when not directly visible.

Crucially, the aperture here is not a single opening but a sequence of calibrated thresholds. The existing rear facade is opened to accommodate expansive glass, dissolving the boundary between interior and exterior. Yet the project resists the totalizing transparency often associated with contemporary residential design. Instead, openings are composed as “dramatic frames,” guiding the eye outward while maintaining a sense of interior depth and enclosure.

Material becomes instrumental in reinforcing this layered permeability. Reeded white oak volumes flank the central space, their vertical striations subtly echoing the texture of the exterior fence beyond. This dialogue between inside and out leans into visual resonance—soft alignments of surfaces, which allows the two realms to bleed into one another without collapsing their distinction. The effect is atmospheric rather than literal, a quiet synchronization of planes that heightens spatial awareness.

The restraint of the material palette further sharpens this perceptual clarity. Oak defines the primary living zones with warmth and continuity, while terrazzo and terracotta ground the more functional spaces in durability and tactility. The kitchen, rendered entirely in brushed metal, introduces a counterpoint—cool, reflective, yet softened through finish. There is a notable absence of excess; each material reads as both surface and signal, delineating use while maintaining cohesion.

“There is nothing extravagant here, and that is where the beauty lies,” says Aranda\Lasch cofounder and principal architect Ben Aranda. “Life itself can be extravagant, but architecture can be the quiet, enduring backdrop that accommodates it.”

Even the plan participates in the logic of aperture. The first floor is kept deliberately open, punctuated only by a monolithic stair and kitchen—two sculptural anchors that organize movement without constricting it. The stair, in particular, operates as both object and interface; its handrail, described as the project’s singular moment of extravagance, becomes a tactile point of contact between body and architecture. In a home defined by visual porosity, this detail grounds the experience in touch.

What emerges is a domestic environment that privileges continuity over separation, yet never abandons the need for gradation. Apertures evolve beyond being ‘seen through’ and become about ‘sensing across’—light filtering, textures aligning, volumes expanding and contracting, all in response to daily rhythms. Even from deep within the apartment, the garden’s presence is perceptible.

Leveraging its unique advantages, the Garden Apartment proposes an alternative model for urban living that maximizes spatial experience in the service of life rather than square footage. It does not impose itself as an object to be admired, nor does it operate as an instrument to capture attention for social currency. It continually directs awareness to personal moments outward, inward, and everywhere in between.

To see this and other works by the studio, please visit arandalasch.com.

Photography courtesy of Aranda\Lasch and RBM Lab.

When one thinks of Savannah, they picture cobblestone streets enveloped in draping Spanish moss and lined with Antebellum-era, Georgian-style row houses. What they might not realize is that this compact, historically significant, and undeniably haunted port town is also home to a sprinkling of distinctive Moderne and Midcentury Modern tower blocks, rising amid the Hostess City’s quaint park squares.

One such postwar structure is the six-story First Federal Savings & Loan Association Building—erected by architecture firm Levy and Kiley—along the central commercial drag of Broughton Street. For the past six decades, the landmarked edifice has stood out with its well-maintained gray granite volumes, white concrete frames, and blue mosaic tile walls. When transforming the 36,000-square-foot building into the newly opened, 44-key Municipal Grand Hotel, polyvalent firm AAmp Studio sought to emphasize—even exaggerate—the texturally complex surface materials found within. Working with local practice Ward Architecture + Preservation, the studio achieved this by peeling back existing layers. What they uncovered was not only accentuated, but also served as inspiration for the non-structural changes that followed.

“The challenges in taking a landmarked former bank—and later municipal building—and transforming it into a full-service hotel experience were evident from the start,” says Andrew Ashey, AAmp Studio co-founder. “But rather than be daunted by the task, we saw it as an amazing opportunity for creative design interventions that united historic and new in a very holistic fashion.” What this largely amounted to was the almost surgical introduction of deeply referential yet softening finishes and curvilinear inserts.

As respectful as these additions are, they clearly distinguish themselves from the original elements. The strategy reflects a more holistic, interpretive, and frankly successful form of architectural preservation, in the vein of the widely lauded 19th-century theorist Eugène Viollet-le-Duc. For him, the continuation of a building’s original intent and relevance—achieved through the technological advancements of its time—should supersede superficial facsimile.

AAmp Studio began the building’s careful conversion by easing the threshold between the ground floor and the streetscape. The once uninviting entrance is now freshly illuminated and features an inviting lounge seating area, with new lush planters smoothing the transition. The subsequent double-height lobby now serves as the main hospitality space, complete with an expansive bar and a range of table and sofa arrangements. Original blue tile mosaics wrap the columns in this exuberant interior.

Because of this repeated material language, the firm extended a tropical modernist sensibility across all public areas—a fitting response to the sweltering climate. Nods to Roberto Burle Marx’s proclivity for botanical motifs and Oscar Niemeyer’s organicism appear throughout. This locally rooted haunt is designed to operate at all hours: a family restaurant by day and a bustling watering hole by night. A former bank boardroom now ingeniously serves as a private dining space.

“We hold a deep, and slightly obsessive, reverence for the all-day lobby bar, which is really the foundation of Midnight Auteur,” says Ryan Diggins, partner and CEO at Midnight Auteur. “We love the idea of immersing our team and our guests in a vibrant, celebratory experience that only a hotel lobby bar can appropriately capture.”

Other Municipal Grand venues include the concealed-access Hot Eye cocktail lounge in the basement, clad in a palette of dark terrazzo, deep-stained wood, and shades of red. Sun Club abuts the rooftop pool—lined with an azure zellige tile wall—and frames some of the best views in town.

Available in five tiers, guest rooms take on a far more subdued, sand-toned aesthetic—still aligned with the property’s Midcentury Modern character. Hints of Finnish master Alvar Aalto are hard to miss. Across the offering, bathroom-anchoring vestibules in a rich shade of green lead through millwork thresholds into the main bedrooms. Here, red marble countertops—serving as minibars and desks—play against style-appropriate curved mirrors, undulating banquette seating ideal for remote work, and plush headboards. Highly detailed terrazzo floors tie everything together, while some suites feature private balconies overlooking Broughton Street.

The overall scheme is a deft marriage of site responsiveness—both to the building itself and the surrounding neighborhood—and sophisticated references to international design movements and sub-movements.

What: Municipal Grand
Where: Savannah, Georgia
How much: $281 per night
Design draws: A rare modernist gem sensitively restored and turned into a thriving, public facing hotel with extensive nods to various modernist movements and a local, contemporary culture.
Book it: Municipal Grand

Go virtually on vacation with more design destinations right here.

Photography by Brooke Holm.

Few design conditions are as layered as the inhabited palimpsest – a historic building asked to absorb a contemporary life without surrendering what made it worth preserving in the first place. Penthouse Frankfurt, completed by Munich-based workshop and studio Holzrausch, navigates exactly this tension. The Wilhelminian era left behind a very particular architectural grammar – deep floor plates, generously proportioned rooms, and load-bearing masonry. Rather than smooth over these conditions or treat them as a neutral backdrop, Holzrausch worked the existing fabric into the logic of the intervention itself.

The two-story roof extension that crowns the building is the project’s boldest move, and its most structurally clarifying one. By constructing a new volume above the historic shell, the project distinguishes legibly between what was found and what was made. Inside, Kambala – an African hardwood with a warm amber grain that oxidizes gracefully – runs as full-height panelling across rooms, built-ins, and circulations alike, functioning as a continuous spatial membrane.

Warm-brushed stainless steel meets terrazzo and stained timber within the kitchen. Holzrausch, operating as a single-source supplier with designers, construction planners, and craftspeople in continuous dialogue, was particularly well positioned to resolve these junctions. The end result is coherent precisely because no single element was considered in isolation from the whole.

The client came with an art collection, of which required a space with walls that do not compete, and circulation that allowed for sustained attention. The calm sequencing of rooms was a direct response to this need, with the Kambala shell providing a visual ground warm enough to humanize the spaces without asserting itself against the works on display. It is a balance that gallery-adjacent residences frequently fail to strike, defaulting either to the clinical neutrality of a white cube or to an exuberant domesticity that overwhelms the collection.

View more information on Holzrausch’s website.

Photography by Salva Lopez.

Smell is the sense most closely associated with memory, our olfactory systems nestled right next to the hippocampus. A whiff of cologne on a crowded subway car or an unmistakable trace of a beloved baked good in a nearby shop can instantly transport us to a different time and place. Since 1883, Italian perfumery Satinine has studied the art of scent, and now presents its newest space, Oficina Milanese, designed by Mara Bragagnolo, which treats memory through scent as something spatial, tactile, and alive.

A modern interpretation of the traditional portineria, or concierge, the stately doors open onto a distinctly Milanese sequence of spaces, each facet mirroring the culture of the city beyond. Bragagnolo positions hospitality as a principle of architecture, drawing from the entrance halls of historic buildings—thresholds where the act of arrival becomes ceremonial. Here, that gesture unfolds across a series of distinct yet connected environments: a reception-like portineria that reframes exchange as ritual, a more intimate sensory room for discovering fragrances in quiet seclusion, and a curatorial space designed for rotation, collaboration, and dialogue with art and design.

Integrity is essential to understanding the longevity of a perfume house established nearly 150 years ago. Throughout, the lighting, stonework, tile, and millwork are not only locally sourced but shaped through close collaboration with Milanese artisans, reinforcing a supply chain rooted in proximity and care. Every furnishing element—from the oak boiserie to the custom lighting fixtures—was made by hand, carrying forward a lineage of craft that feels vehemently relevant rather than nostalgic.

The care and attention to detail evident throughout the space, combined with the provenance of the hands that created it, marks Oficina Milanese as distinctly respectful of its surroundings. It underscores a larger truth: that Milan’s identity is inseparable from its material culture, and that authenticity is not declared but built, surface by surface.

As scent is emotional, so too are the details featured in the space. Lombard terracotta tiles, laid according to traditional techniques, ground the interior in regional history, while glossy ceramic tiles arranged vertically nod to the facades of Milanese apartment buildings. Cathedral glass partitions diffuse light with a quiet luminosity, recalling the thresholds of historic entryways. Against this, oak paneling introduces warmth, set in deliberate contrast to cardinal marble, burl wood, and satin-finished steel. The sensorial experience gently oscillates between softness and precision.

The lighting, developed in collaboration with lighting designer Martina Frattura, bathes the space in a muted, diffused glow that boasts a silky, enveloping “satin” effect in subtle reference to the brand itself. It is less about illumination than atmosphere, softening edges and extending time within the room.

Art Deco sensibilities meet a color drench in the lounge area, where sage velvet wraps the room in a kind of quiet opulence. Round forms paired with slender metallic verticals introduce height and rhythm, while curtains provide a sense of retreat from the city’s constant movement.

A sliding door with colored glass panes seals the space from view when necessary, a nod to the stained glass windows that punctuate Milan’s churches. Directly to the left, a burlwood bar inlaid with the brand’s name encapsulates the project’s ethos. Highly polished and meticulously crafted, it transforms the expected gesture of welcome into something more enduring—an invitation to linger. Flanked by twin chrome lamps, their reflective surfaces catch and refract the surrounding materials, embedding the space in a subtle play of light and texture.

As Satinine looks toward the future, it does so not in defiance of the past, but through a careful continuation of it where craftsmanship becomes a contemporary language, and simple gestures, repeated with intention, become ritual.

To learn more about Satinine’s Oficina Milanese or designer Mara Bragagnolo, visit satinine.com and marabragagnolo.com, respectively.

Photography by Tiziano Ercoli & Riccardo Giancola.

Throughout his illustrious career, the late Karl Lagerfeld amassed an impressive portfolio of distinctive properties. Recent monograph Karl Lagerfeld A Life in Houses, published by Thames & Hudson, surveys this vast collection: everything from the Memphis-ladden apartment in Monte Carlo to the high-ornate, era-appropriate eighteenth-century mansion Hôtel Pozzo di Borgo in Paris. Regardless of the address, the revered fashion designer always, unabashedly, combined old with new, shedding fresh light on various historical design movements and their most important pioneers. Most of these homes have been the subject of expansive magazine print features and the fodder of tabloid headlines but little focus has ever really been placed on his workspaces.

That all changed with the recent uncovering and reformatting of Lagerfeld’s private Saint-Germain-des-Prés office. Luxury apartment and home rental platform HIGHSTAY has deftly, yet carefully, transformed the multi-level bureau into a two bedroom Saint-Germain I accommodation replete with original architectural fit-outs and collected items. This period room of sorts is a timecapsule, preserved in exactly the same configuration as the day the legendary talent left for the last time. Away from the major couture houses he stewarded up to his death in 2019, the space was a more intimate retreat; a stylistic reflection of himself, in which he could carry out private business and entertain close friends.

Though decidedly indicative of a specific era in design history—not disclosed but easily deciphered as the late 1990s and early 2000s—the sprawling 2690 square-foot unit unfolds with sleek, space-age-like built-ins contoured in curvilinear half polished and half patinated steel surfaces. Even in this once-contemporary pared back setting—somehow timeless and au courant yet again—Laggerfeld still exerted a degree of opulence, if slightly restraint in overall scheme.

The near palatial stairwell was custom designed by him in partnership with top-billing Australian product designer Marc Newson. The “La tête dans les nuages” (Head in the Clouds) sculpture standing at its base was created by artist Laurence Perratzi.

In one of the adjoining lounges, soaring mirrored ceilings expand the visual perspective of twin steel libraries—articulated in the same formal vocabulary—described above—as a custom bedframe-cum-armoire. Normally a stark material that evokes a level of cold industrial conformity was rendered in warm, corporeal form here. Wielded in the more intimate walk-in closets and bar, dark-tone wood paneling emerges a grounding contrast.

This matrix of a hybrid complex—an urban retreat featuring a private hammam and sauna—also includes a second en-suite bedroom, separate dining room, and other annexes. There’s a visual consistency of capsule and pixelated elements—hinting at a more sophisticated interpretation of early digital motifs.

Complementing the hard product is a curated Karl Itinerary incorporation stops at the couturier’s favorite Left Bank haunts, Café de Flore and Maison du Caviar among them.

What: Saint-Germain I
Where: Paris, France
How much: price upon request
Design draws: Karl Lagerfeld’s lesser-known private office perfectly preserved as a two-bedroom rental apartment with sleek metallic capsule and pixelated pattern details throughout.
Book it: Saint-Germain I

Go virtually on vacation with more design destinations right here.

Photography courtesy of HIGHSTAY