Tag: interior design

  • Four Seasons designer Ed Ng on creating hotels of the imagination

    With clients from Mandarin Oriental to Four Seasons and Rosewood, AB Concept is a design studio that inhabits the global first division. Its co-founder Ed Ng speaks to Cultural Union about the intuition that lies behind great spaces “It’s the sixth sense of the designer,” says Ed Ng, when asked how he anticipates the desires…

  • Brutalist dreams: how visual artist Vincent Fournier photographs past visions of the future

    French visual artist and photographer Vincent Fournier speaks to Cultural Union about his work chronicling the mid-century Futurist and Brutalist structures of eastern Europe We first encountered the work of French visual artist Vincent Fournier at the Civilization exhibition in the Saatchi Gallery in London, where his photography reframed contemporary life as something unfamiliar and other, challenging us to…

  • 6 must-see highlights from 2024’s PAD London Art + Design fair

    London’s most elegant design fair returns to Berkeley Square for its 16 edition, showcasing the best of contemporary and 20th-century art, furniture and jewellery. A chilly wind might be rustling through the upper branches of the international art scene but there was no sign of it at the ebullient collector’s preview of PAD London, the…

  • Why Greg Natale, interior design’s king of glamour, is a modernist at heart

    Australian super-designer Greg Natale talks to Cultural Union about his world-famous interiors, his influences – and 1980s TV.

  • Natalia Miyar blends glamour with comfort in her dazzling interiors

    Architect and interior designer Natalia Miyar speaks to Cultural Union about her contextual approach to creativity and her residential and hotel projects in London, Ibiza, Miami and beyond. “My job is like a conductor of sorts,” says Natalia Miyar. “I just weave together beautiful parts of things.” The designer is describing the practical aspects of…

  • How Goddard Littlefair reached the global pantheon of design firms

    With a client list that includes Four Seasons, Raffles, Mandarin Oriental, Mondrian and the Berkeley Group, Goddard Littlefair are in a pantheon of true global interior design studios. Jo Littlefair sat down with Cultural Union to explain how they got there. In an era of spectacular property launches, a certain design studio’s name keeps appearing…

  • Sublime Hideaways: 5 of the most evocative remote architectural retreats

    In a hyper-connected, minutely mapped world, the desire to escape off-grid is becoming a primal urge. A book by gestalten, Sublime Hideaways, explores the phenomenon. In Fritz Lang’s 1927 masterpiece Metropolis, the megacity’s workers toil in the sulphurous underbelly of the urban monolith under the watchful eyes of the ruling elite, whose children play in secluded…

  • 20 incredible living rooms by top interior designers

    If you think the living room – described by Sir Terence Conran as “the temple of the soul” – has been around forever, you’d be mistaken.

  • Step inside Anouska Hempel’s exquisite Parisian boutique hotel, Monsieur George

    Legendary interior designer Anouska Hempel talks to Cultural Union about her jewel-like Parisian bolt-hole, Monsieur George Hotels, at their best, are portals. They hold the power to transport us to a heightened version of reality, a stage for us to act as elevated versions of ourselves. Monsieur George, tucked in a relaxed side street off…

  • Michael Mundy on photographing people, interiors – and the White House

    New York photographer Michael Mundy speaks to Cultural Union There are some exceptionally talented photographers currently active in the design sphere, but few produce work as riveting as New Yorker Michael Mundy. A regular cover artist for AD and World of Interiors, he’s also a photographer of legends like John Updike – and he’s the…

  • Design studio DE ROSEE SA on curating atmosphere from London to Lisbon

    Claire Sá and Max de Rosée speak to Cultural Union about their globally respected London and Lisbon-based architecture and design studio, DE ROSEE SA. “We curate atmosphere,” says Max de Rosée – which is as good a description as you’ll ever come across for the ineffable nature of design. It’s also highly apt: while DE…

  • David Collins Studio have redefined the ocean liner with Cunard’s Queen Anne

    London’s David Collins Studio, together with Sybille de Margerie, Richmond International, creative director Adam Tihany and art consultancy Double Decker, have taken cruise shipping into the first division of hospitality design with Cunard’s latest ocean liner, Queen Anne Back in the 1920s, Golden-Age ocean liners defined themselves by their speed and engineering. A hundred years…

  • How art consultant Judith Tatar defines narratives for the world’s leading hotels

    Art consultants are not credited as often as interior designers or architects, yet they are a vital component of defining the appeal of leading hotels. We speak to Judith Tatar, founder of Tatar Art Projects, about the invaluable role her company provides to clients from Waldorf Astoria to Rosewood. If you’ve stayed at the Conrad…

  • Design Museum Brussels is leading a reappraisal of vintage and contemporary plastic design

    The ground-breaking Plastic Design Collection has reopened following a major update at the excellent Design Museum Brussels. Cultural Union sat down with the museum’s director, Arnaud Bozzini, to learn more about the exhibition and the vital work of the young Belgian institution. One of the jewels of Belgium’s capital city is the Design Museum Brussels, located…

  • Meet Attua Aparicio, winner of the 2024 Ralph Saltzman Prize for emerging designers

    In the latest of our Designer Q&A series, Effect speaks to Attua Aparicio, a London-based Spanish multidisciplinary artist and the 2024 recipient of the Design Museum’s prestigious Ralph Saltzman Prize To visit Attua Aparicio’s exhibition at the Design Museum in London is to experience a collection of ceramics that appear to glisten with life. Digit Texture Vases – bearing the…

  • How the world’s most iconic cars are as collectable as fine art

    GQ columnist and BBC’s Top Gear editor-at-large Jason Barlow talks to Cultural Union about his book The Atlas of Car Design: The World’s Most Iconic Cars, published by Phaidon “Beautiful cars will always be appreciated as kinetic sculptures,” says Jason Barlow in his book The Atlas of Car Design, pointing out that the best classic…

  • 10 essential highlights from BRAFA 2024

    One of the world’s great art fairs returns to Brussels for its 69th edition, bookending the start of the design year If December’s Miami Art Week closes the design year with an exuberant orgy of art and design happenings, BRAFA heralds its January rebirth, with a supremely assured exhibition that is high in both elegance…

  • How Vincent Fournier captured Oscar Niemeyer’s Modernist masterpiece, Brasília

    French visual artist and photographer Vincent Fournier speaks to Cultural Union about Brasília – his extraordinary body of work chronicling Oscar Niemeyer’s mid-century Brazilian capital city The beautiful, compelling and unnerving images of Vincent Fourier have been surfacing with an increasing tempo across the globe, and it’s surely because they speak so eloquently to our need to…

  • 5 Modernist icons with stunning architecture and interiors

    Mid-century Modern is the 20th century’s most enduring and engaging design legacy. With seminal projects from John Lautner, Eero Saarinen and Paulo Mendes Da Rocha, we round up 5 extraordinary examples of Modernist architecture and interiors, curated from Modernist Icons by gestalten It’s now more than 70 years since the term Mid-Century Modern first appeared…

  • Tara Bernerd has created a Baroque Modernist jewel at Rosewood Munich

    In the newly opened Rosewood Munich, the Bavarian capital now has the landmark hotel it deserves Think of Munich, and you might think of BMW, well-heeled Bavarians, the Oktoberfest, FC Bayern Munich and their colour-shifting Allianz Arena. You probably won’t think of hotels. That’s all about to change with the opening of Rosewood Munich – a…