All products featured on Architectural Digest are independently selected by our editors. However, we may receive compensation from retailers and/or from purchases of products through these links.
The Artist Turning Quilts Into Architecture
.png)
Quilts you can shelter beneath. That’s the promise of Luke Haynes's push to turn stitched textiles into functional structures. An acclaimed quilt artist whose photorealist works have been shown at the Brooklyn Museum and the American Folk Art Museum, Haynes tested the idea last summer in Phoenix's Sereno Park: a 45-foot above-ground tunnel made from nearly 200 quilts stretched over barrel-arched steel. “The city had asked for proposals for shade,” explains the artist, who calls his creations “quilt architecture.” The result was both beautiful—“the sunlight through the patchwork resembles stained glass,” he says—and functional, the shaded area running 20 degrees cooler than outside.
Next up, a gateway for High Point, North Carolina. Haynes is installing an 82-foot quilt canopy at the entrance of Cohab Space, a nonprofit creative campus in the furniture capital providing studio and exhibition space to local makers. Unlike his previous structure, this one is built for longevity. Haynes—whom Cohab cofounder Michael Manes calls “a rock star in the quilting world”—is constructing it from scraps donated by Sunbrella, using the company's signature weather-resistant fabrics.
For Haynes, who actually worked as an architect before becoming an artist, using quilts to create built environments is a full-circle moment. “Quilts have always been about comfort, the tradition of handmade craft, and the sustainable use of recycled material,” he says. That said, he still makes collectible quilts to hang on walls. And he’s not above making bed coverings either. “I'd love a hotel to commission me to do all the quilts!” –Catherine Hong
Textile Tastemaker Tekla Takes AD Inside Its New Copenhagen HQ
Tekla, the Danish textile brand that made its name with perfect pj’s and crisp, striped bedsheets (Harry Styles wore their hooded brown robe for his Adore You music video), has moved into a new Copenhagen headquarters that is just as cool as you might imagine. Situated in the post-industrial, waterside Nordhavn neighborhood, the airy space was designed with their longtime collaborators Mentze Ottenstein, and, as founder and creative director Charlie Hedin explains, it “reflects many of the values we care about: functionality, openness, and a quality way of living with proximity to nature.” Bathed in natural light that pours in from the ceiling, the open space, accented with a swooping chalk white spiral staircase, is filled with design trophies by the likes of Le Corbusier and Alvar and Aino Aalto. For inspiration, they looked to touchstone minimalist interiors like Donald Judd’s spaces in Manhattan and Marfa, Texas and Dia Beacon, the art center in upstate New York. “They exemplify a balance of emotion with restraint and are places where every detail serves a purpose.”—Hannah Martin
A Sheila Hicks Fabric Returns After 30 Years Out of Production
To fully appreciate Altiplano, the wool-and-nylon weave recently released by Knoll Textiles, you need to take it apart. So says Sheila Hicks, the acclaimed fiber artist responsible for its design. To do so is to put yourself in Hicks’s shoes in the 1950s, when the now-nonagenarian was exploring the textile traditions of the Andes for her undergraduate thesis at Yale. “I happened to stumble across [the traditional fabric] when I was walking with my backpack in the highlands of Peru,” says Hicks, who just opened a show of new work at SFMOMA in August. “I was fascinated not only by how it looked, but how it was being made.”
In fact, Altiplano is the second incarnation of Hicks’s interpretation of the mid-scale check, first released in 1966 as Inca—a name that reflected the era’s casual conflation of Peruvian cultures. The fabric, which went out of production in 1991, has now been rechristened and modernized as one of three Knoll Textiles archival reissues introduced this fall. Produced with heathered yarns and woven in a manner that makes warp and weft nearly indistinguishable, the fabric’s elegant simplicity is exactly what makes it so special. “These weavers of the Altiplano—they’re the ones who deserve credit for this intelligence,” says Hicks. “The textile is so simple, it’s unbelievable—and yet so sophisticated that you’d have a hard time doing better.” —Lila Allen
With This New Limewash Paint Collection, You Can Do It Like Douglas
Douglas Friedman, the suavely mustachioed photographer known for his cinematic portraits and interiors, isn’t one to stay in his lane—that much he’ll tell you himself. “I don’t feel ready to limit myself,” he says. And thank goodness for that: Over the past few years, Friedman has increasingly left his mark on products that live off the page, i.e. in real homes: a suite of hide rugs for Kyle Bunting, cactus glassware for Lobmeyr, and even a swimwear line.
Now, fans of the photographer can drench their homes in the full Friedman. On October 30, the tastemaker released a curated collection of eight limewash paints with Color Atelier, each of them drawn from the palette of Marfa, Texas, where Douglas has owned a home for the past decade (though said home is currently on the market.) The shades range from the soft, dusty rose of Rabbit’s Tongue to Old Saddle, a deep terracotta, to Cinderblock, a gentle gray. For his own home renovation, Friedman deployed Dirt, a chalky brown, among other hues. “People think the walls are brown suede,” he says.
Friedman says he might be a limewash convert for life. “The shadows are deeper and the highlights are brighter,” he gushes. If you’re curious—and after that kind of testimonial, who wouldn’t be?—Burçu Garnier, cofounder at Color Atelier, notes that the line is “DIY friendly.” —Lila Allen
Four Essential Stops in Athens
Few cities juxtapose old and new as exquisitely as Athens, where ancient ruins meet a burgeoning contemporary design scene. Here, four spaces capturing the Greek capital’s momentum.
“The city’s striking contrasts between ancient landmarks and modern urban life provide endless inspiration,” says Aris Gounaris, founder of Bombyx, a furniture and lighting showroom unfurling across two apartments in a 1930s modernist building in the city’s center. Here, he illuminates pieces from the likes of São Paulo furniture studio ETEL and New Delhi lighting atelier Paul Matter.
In the stylish Kolonaki area, Yagos Kounelis runs Antiqua, a gallery established by his grandparents in 1954. Now, it showcases 20th-century design finds from icons like Vittoriano Viganò and Ettore Sottsass. “Athens is going through a vibrant moment,” Kounelis says, noting an influx of international migration. “It gives the city and its design scene a strong, fresh influence.”
Shops capture this shifting energy too. Awash in aluminum and terrazzo, Mouki Mou in the central Plaka area mingles fashion, jewelry, textiles, and tableware much of it from Greek makers. (Cretan glassblower Nikos Haritakis’s bespoke vessels are sure to be among the most wanted.) Following the country’s economic crisis, says founder Maria Lemos, “it is wonderful to see a regeneration of Athens in all aspects—culture, food, and design.”
At Anthologist, a textile company based in Plateia Anexartisias, cultural preservation is the mission. Their new Woven Harvest collection features warmly hued vintage textiles with floral and geometric patterns. “I feel like I connect to their makers,” muses founder Andria Mitsakos, who sources floor runners, wall hangings and the like from Greek villages, local markets, and elsewhere across the Mediterranean. “Their soul is part of it, and then the object becomes part of yours.”—Alia Akkam
Japanese Art and Whisky Make a Dream Team
Artist Hiroshi Senju had been exploring the concept of hibiki, which means harmony in Japanese, long before the House of Suntory noticed. Physical/Metaphysical, the Japanese painter’s solo show on exhibit at New York’s Sundaram Tagore gallery through November 15, is a prime example. His canvases depict what appear to be abstracted waterfalls, featuring white pigments that cascade down the surface of the muted jewel-toned paintings before dissolving into a feathery spray. Waterfalls, says the artist, encapsulate the intangible. “Water, gravity, and temperature are all captured,” Senju notes. “Sometimes we, as humans, flow and make big splashes. Sometimes we need to let ourselves go and follow gravity. Other times we need to push back.”
At the back of the gallery, a select few paintings glow under black light; for this grouping, Senju has experimented with fluorescent pigments, which render his waterfalls in a bioluminescent glow. The artist explains that his inspiration for these was the neon signs outside Japanese bars advertising brands like Suntory. In a full circle moment, the liquor company has tapped him to design a limited-edition presentation box for two of their most coveted aged blends of Hibiki whisky (aged 21 and 30 years). Each bottle comes in a box encased in a box printed with one of Senju’s waterfall paintings. Safe to say Senju’s art and aged whisky make a harmonious pair. —Maya Ibbitson
