From a Blockbuster New Building in China to Reimagined Wallpapers From an English Castle, Here Are AD ’s Discoveries of the Month
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Photo: Iwan Baan
Debut: Heritage textile house Watts 1874 mines England’s historic Eastnor Castle for patterns
Eastnor Castle, an early-19th-century estate designed by Robert Smirke in England’s Herefordshire County, looks every bit the stately fortress one might expect of a historic manor, with imposing battlements and surrounding moat. But beyond its Norman Revival walls are rooms that blend kaleidoscopic verve with the warmth of a country cottage. That eclectic look—the result of generations of shifting Regency, Victorian, and Italianate tastes—has now inspired a collection of wallpapers and textiles by venerable British fabric company Watts 1874, which just celebrated its 150th anniversary.
Founded by three English architects, Watts first came to prominence in the Queen Anne Revival era, embodying the highly ornate interiors of the day. Current creative director Fiona Flint saw that company legacy reflected in Eastnor’s patterned wall coverings and tapestries, a mix she cheerfully calls “a little bit mad.” The Moorish motifs in the Great Hall felt ripe for reimagination. So too did the chinoiserie stretching across the Chinese and Queens bedrooms, the latter named for Mary of Teck (wife to King George V), who spent the night there in 1937. “I wanted to celebrate these incredible, very beautifully drawn seedpods and flowers,” says Flint, who zeroed in on specific botanical elements to develop digitally printed motifs, some in punched-up, contemporary colorways. “We’ve made the japonica blue,” she notes. “That’s unheard of.”
These days, Eastnor courts nobility of the Hollywood variety. Shiv Roy’s extravagant wedding on the hit HBO series Succession was shot at the castle, which is also available to rent for nonfictional nuptials or visits. Thanks to Watts, those of us who can’t pop across the pond can still surround ourselves with the Eastnor look through the transportive power of textiles. watts1874.co.uk —Charlotte Collins
Restaurants: In Amsterdam, AD100 designer Jean-Philippe Demeyer pays homage to Mondrian
At restaurant Bisous in the De Pijp neighborhood of Amsterdam, AD100 designer Jean-Philippe Demeyer has once again donned his magician’s cloak to conjure a delirious, madcap interior alive with color, pattern, and myriad cultural references. The walls of the lofty space are wrapped in a Mondrian-like fabric that pays homage to the preeminent Dutch artist, while illuminated concrete lip sculptures on the walls make explicit reference to the French eatery’s name, which means kisses. Against that zany backdrop, Demeyer—never one to skimp on theatrical effect—added red velvet curtains with golden tassels worthy of an opera house, cut-mirror columns that sparkle like disco balls, and unapologetically démodé stair runners stitched together for banquette upholstery and carpets. “The owners wanted a restaurant with a nightclub feeling, as many do now, so I had to go all the way,” Demeyer muses. “It’s meant to be a real experience, a form of escapism, an atmosphere that transports you.” Mission accomplished. bisous-official.com —Mayer Rus
Art Scene: A tiled mural by Alex Proba amps up a Miami swimming pool
A pool is a forgotten canvas,” says Alex Proba, a New York City– and Portland, Oregon–based artist and designer known for her use of naive abstractions. Like Pablo Picasso and David Hockney before her, she has painted swimming pools with site-specific murals, her vibrant compositions glistening beneath the water. Now, thanks to a private client in Miami, Proba has taken things a step further—realizing one such tableau in custom glazed tiles.
Working with Cerámica Suro, a manufacturer in Guadalajara, Mexico, Proba translated a puzzle of idiosyncratic shapes into tiles that wrap the bottom of the pool. “Everything I do starts from the same place—florals, nature, color,” she explains, noting that her own upbringing was conspicuously devoid of those things. (“Growing up, everything in my house was black and white.”) It was on trips with her grandmother, a florist who wore eye-catching mismatched patterns, that she discovered her creative side, painting blooms found in the garden.
Today, Proba reflects, “I want to make things that bring joy to the world,” favoring formats that engage a wide audience. Her 2021 installation at Design Miami, for instance, featured totem-like sculptures that doubled as seating. Her murals, meanwhile, have graced everything from office buildings to restaurants to Louis Vuitton boutiques.
In Miami, her latest pool promises to be more low-maintenance than a painted surface, which fades in sunlight, requiring touch-ups over time. To Proba’s surprise, the tilework also looks even more vibrant. “This one’s all about color,” she says of the bold palette. “It almost looks like a coral reef.” Take that as her subtle nudge to be kinder to the planet. “We all want beauty in the world. Can we treat what’s around us a little better?” studioproba.com —Hannah Martin
Architecture: On the coast of the Yellow Sea, a new cultural venue by two of China’s most exciting creative minds looks to the sun
Yantai, an industrial city on the Yellow Sea in Eastern China, wanted to give a vast new beachfront development an icon. And who better to design it than OPEN Architecture, the Beijing-based firm that has already created some of the most original buildings in China? Those include UCCA Dune, a contemporary art museum that looks like seashells strewn across a sandy beach, and the Chapel of Sound, an open-air concert hall that resembles a hollow boulder. Invited to submit a proposal for Yantai, OPEN’s husband-and-wife founders, Li Hu and Huang Wenjing—regular honorees on the AD100 list of Architectural Digest China—were determined to create a building that, Li says, rewards repeat visits, inviting you “to explore, to contemplate, to understand.” The couple also envisioned a cultural destination for a part of the city that so far has very few.
Opened to the public this past October, their Sun Tower rises from a 164-foot-diameter circle to a height, again, of 164 feet. Roughly conical, it is cut open like a geode on its sea-facing side, revealing inner and outer concrete envelopes crossed by ramps that are also structural supports. The enclosed space functions as a multilevel gallery. At the building’s base is a large amphitheater, open around-the-clock and big enough to seat 800 people for a range of events (including the daily spectacle of the sun rising over the sea and nearby Zhifu Island). The theater also amplifies the sound of the ocean, like a seashell held up to the ear.
The top of the building contains a public library branch with 5,000 volumes, many on ocean ecology. Aside from the ground-level café, it is the only part of the 53,410-square-foot structure that is air-conditioned—not for the people but for the books. The rest is cooled by air that rises up through what is essentially a giant chimney. Above the library is the “phenomena space,” so-called because the oculus in its domed roof serves as a porthole to the cosmos. (At noon on the summer solstice, for example, the sun casts a perfect circle on a small bronze pool—and the water in it starts to spin.) Meanwhile, at the plaza level, a shallow channel follows the shadow of the building’s peak during the equinoxes. Huang explains, “The whole building was sculpted by the movement of the sun.” Adds Li, “You can say that it’s a very complicated sundial.”
The architects are products of two cultures. Born in China in 1973, they met in college, came to the US for graduate school, then went to work for New York firms: Li for Steven Holl Architects and Huang for Pei Cobb Freed & Partners. They founded OPEN in New York in 2006, and in 2008 moved the firm, along with their two children, to Beijing. Recently, they taught jointly at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design (focusing on ecological and social sustainability) while managing their studio in China from some 7,000 miles away.
Architecture curator Aric Chen, now the director of Rotterdam’s Nieuwe Instituut, who lived in China for many years, says the Sun Tower “attests to what Huang and Li do so well: take a sometimes vague commission and shape it into an incredible work of architecture with a clear cultural purpose.” Says Huang: “We didn’t want to build an empty landmark.” —Fred A. Bernstein
This story appears in AD’s January issue. Never miss a story when you subscribe to AD.
Originally Appeared on Architectural Digest
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