Search this site

Travel stories from YUZU Magazine: design hotels, boutique stays, island guides and city guides across the Aegean, Mediterranean, Europe and the Americas. TRAVEL A PRIVATE WORLD ON THE PACIFIC A STOCKHOLM LANDMARK THROUGH A BARCELONA LENS THE NEW ERA OF A 600-YEAR-OLD PALAZZO INSIDE CHRISTIAN LOUBOUTIN’S VERMELHO PEOPLE COME TO HYDRA NOT ONLY FOR FOOD BUT FOR A FEELING BORGO GALLANA ANA LUI ‘Island life is definitely something that makes me happy!’ A SLOWER SIDE OF OAXACA LE SIRENUSE MARE A NEW CHAPTER IN A QUIET BAY BENEDICTA & BENOÎT’S Utopian Paradise THE VOCMOS SPIRIT: SMALL, PERSONAL, AND FULL OF SOUL A MINIMALIST PAUSE IN TIME SIFNOS, AT ITS OWN PACE A QUIET, WILD RETREAT AT DUN ALUINN, TIME SLOWS SWIM, DINE, RESTORE, REPEAT LIVING BY THE ANTIPAROS FLOW ATMOSPHERE OVER NOSTALGIA MILOS, IN SLOW MOTION NOBU TORONTO DRAWS FROM THE JAPANESE RYOKAN ISTANBUL’S NEW COOL SPOT: HOVAGIMYAN Show More

September 21, 2026 | DESIGN & INTERIORS COLORADO HOME words Noah Mercer photos Kylie Fitts production Karine Monié Set against the Rocky Mountains, this Colorado residence by Kimberly Timmons Interiors brings private living together with the polish of luxury hospitality. Designed over five years, the house was conceived to move easily between two very different modes: intimate everyday life and large-scale entertaining. For Nikki Holt, Creative Director and Residential Studio Design Director at Kimberly Timmons Interiors, and senior designer Carter Brasch, the answer was not to make the house feel like a hotel, but to borrow from hospitality’s sense of flow, service and occasion. “The goal was to merge high-end residential comfort with the polish and operational sophistication of luxury hospitality,” Holt says. A SENSE OF ARRIVAL The idea begins before entering the house. A circular drive and mirrored chrome front door give arrival a certain ceremony, while inside, sculptural walnut columns establish an architectural rhythm across the different levels. The designers looked to the quiet glamour of a classic Ritz-Carlton experience rather than any single stylistic reference. As Holt explains, the intention was to translate the experience of luxury hospitality rather than reproduce a hotel aesthetic literally. That approach is particularly clear in the two-storey great room, where floor-to-ceiling glazing places the Rocky Mountains firmly within the interior, and in the curved glass staircase leading to the level below. Brasch describes a “consistent sense of arrival” throughout the house — a feeling created as much through movement and proportion as through individual objects. STONE, WALNUT AND COLORADO LIGHT The palette remains deliberately restrained, allowing the changing Colorado light to play a central role. Soft whites, creams, taupes and greiges are grounded by walnut, while stone and porcelain recur throughout the house as part of a consistent material language. Limestone rises across the double-height fireplace walls, while white stone-look surfaces with pronounced veining appear on counters and waterfall edges. In the kitchen, a three-sided porcelain slab island creates one of the home’s stronger sculptural moments, with installation by Moderno Porcelain. “Stone and porcelain selections were curated for both visual impact and performance,” Holt says. Elsewhere, the materials become more expressive. Backlit onyx introduces a softer glow, while the curved staircase is finished with liquid metal treads by Bespoke Finish. Custom cabinetry by William Ohs appears throughout the residence, The Davani Group produced the fireplace surround in the primary bedroom sitting room, and Northern Wide Plank supplied the hardwood flooring.

September 21, 2026 | Art & Culture NIKHIL CHOPRA the FICTION of SELF words Rajesh Punj photos 1- Francesco Raco FIRE X FIRE: Embers / Braci, 3 hours performance with Uriel Barthelemi. Courtesy of the artist and Galleria Continua. 2- Okno Studio. EMBERS / BRACI, Exhibition Views. Courtesy of the artist and Galleria Continua. "The line between art and life should be kept as fluid, and perhaps indistinct, as possible," wrote Allan Kaprow, whose pioneering experiments helped redefine the possibilities of art in the twentieth century. Decades later, Joseph Beuys would similarly argue that art was not merely the production of objects, but a way of shaping experience itself—a social and existential act through which individuals might engage with the world. Though emerging from different traditions, both artists challenged the notion of art as something separate from lived reality. Few contemporary practitioners embody this proposition more completely than Nikhil Chopra. For more than two decades, Chopra has cultivated a practice in which performance, drawing, theatre, installation, history, and everyday life are woven together into a continuous and evolving act of becoming. To encounter Chopra's work is to encounter time itself. His performances frequently unfold over many hours or days, sometimes extending across entire exhibition periods, resisting the accelerated rhythms of contemporary culture in favour of duration, attentiveness, and sustained presence. The spectator is not presented with a singular event or climactic moment but invited into an unfolding process in which action accumulates slowly, often imperceptibly. Sleeping, walking, drawing, dressing, resting, performing, and making become equally significant gestures within a broader choreography of existence. In Chopra's hands, performance is not spectacle but habitation: a way of occupying space, inhabiting history, and testing the body as a site of memory and transformation. In India, where performance art has historically remained less prominent than painting or sculpture despite deep ritual and theatrical traditions, his practice has taken on a particularly distinct position. Over more than two decades, Chopra has developed one of the most internationally recognised performance practices of his generation, while resisting easy placement within either Western performance art or Indian contemporary art. His work instead occupies a fluid space between disciplines, drawing from theatre, portraiture, colonial histories, autobiography, landscape, and the performative traditions of everyday life. A SUFFERING YOU MIGHT EXPECT FROM A BOXER RAJESH PUNJ: What amazes me is the level of concentration that goes into your performances. It's almost exhausting to watch because I feel like you're suffering. You're not, of course; it seems more mental. NIKHIL CHOPRA: Yes, it's a suffering that you might expect from a boxer. There is a delight in watching someone overcome pain and adversity, and in seeing how one tackles that artistically. A sportsman trains for hours. I think it's excruciating to be anything of value to anyone in life. I think that is painful. The question is, when we present ourselves, how do we use that moment to overcome fear and agony, and confront it? Doing the Kochi Biennale was a classic example of how agonising, and at the same time how incredibly rewarding, an experience like that can be. It takes a hell of a lot out of you to do something like that. RP: Then there's being with other people. I imagine you're a very private person. To be in the public eye for so many days, in something like that... NC: I am. I think that has to come from privacy. The fact that you're comfortable putting yourself on display isn't because you're an exhibitionist who likes being on display all the time. For me, it comes from a practice rooted in privacy. You have to have that grounding because, even in a public situation, people are being invited into that privacy. An artist exposing the way they make meaning, or form an opinion, is revealing something that would ordinarily only happen in the studio. “THE BODY, AND THE LANGUAGE THAT EMERGES FROM THE BODY” RP: There seems to be a greater vulnerability in what you do than in what a painter or sculptor does. You're not only producing something; your body, physically, is out there. For most of us, we couldn't do that. NC: I think you do. RP: Well, it's enough for me to put my writing out there. NC: Which is the same thing. It's material, right? The idea is to have a detached relationship with it because you're wanting to have a critical dialogue and a critical exchange. You've got to get Nikhil out of the room in order for people to have an objective and critical conversation with the work. Otherwise, why would you use your most vulnerable material and put yourself out there? In your case it's your text and your writing. In my case it's the body, and the language that emerges from the body. RP: It's interesting because most people go the other way. They find a vulnerable point and stay within their comfort zone. So, there's something exceptional about what you do and how you do it. Some of your performances have gone on for fifty-six or even seventy-two hours. You're really stretching yourself. NC: But you see, I can't have that relationship with it. I can't start placing what I do in an exceptional category. At the end of the day, what I'm doing also has to be read as ordinary. Otherwise, I'm attaching too much importance to it. I want to demystify it. I don't want to shroud it in any more mystery than already surrounds the idea of performance. “IT HAS TO REMAIN GROUNDED IN THE EVERYDAY” RP: And that's interesting, because the way you see it is very different from how the audience receives it. We, as the audience, see it as exceptional, extraordinary, even. NC: Perhaps. But for me, it has to remain grounded in the everyday. That's important. RP: So now, here, this is a different kind of performance, isn't it? It's a collaboration. NC: It's a collaboration. It's a dialogue between me and Uriel, and we've been in dialogue for quite a while. The introduction of sound is important. RP: Which is unusual for you. Most of the performances I've watched are marked by a kind of heavy silence. NC: This work is, in a sense, about summoning demons. Sound works very well with fire as a subject, as opposed to land. There's something lyrical about it. Fire needs a certain rhythm, a certain base. It allows us to enter that shamanic, demonic space. Fire has always been bound up with ritual in a way that no other element has. Air, you breathe. Water, you drink. Land, you walk upon. But fire does something to us. It has also fundamentally altered the course of this planet. We proliferated because of fire. We philosophised because of fire. We became communal because of fire. We sat together around it. In a sense, that's also the beginning of the story of global warming. The moment we struck two pieces of flint together and learned to harvest the energy of the sun, the fate of our species, and of this planet, changed forever. Like moths to a flame, we became captivated by it; by the unknown, by the night, by storytelling. Fire is bound up with theatre, with drama, with shadow and chiaroscuro. The reason we ventured into the darkness as a species is because we carried this powerful thing with us. RP: Within Indian philosophy there must be a great deal written and said about that. NC: Absolutely. Fire is the test. Fire exists in the space between this world and another. RP: Philosophically, in Sanskrit thought, and religiously, there are huge traditions built around it. NC: There are. But I try not to overread the subject I'm working with. Sometimes that can dominate the idea and prevent one from thinking freely. I allow the act of making the artwork to do the work. RP: Because the other thing I felt yesterday was that fire reads as a commentary on the present moment. It carries a sense of violence and aggression. NC: Completely. RP: There's a kind of global aggression now, a temperament, a tension, that feels impossible to ignore. “FOR ME, THE FIRE IS LIFE ITSELF” NC: I think the problem begins when we divide things into good and bad. What appears good can be bad; what appears bad can be good. Fire is an energy. So is water. So is air. We are made up of all of these things. We are stardust at the end of the day. If we're made up of land, water and air, then where is the fire? For me, the fire is life itself. It's the heart beating. It's blood moving through the veins. It's the body generating heat. And like any flame, it has a lifespan. At some point, the candle burns out. At some point, the fire dies. RP: I wanted to ask you about performance in India. When you were growing up and later at art school, there were few reference points for what you were doing. That must have made it difficult to see performance as a legitimate artistic practice, especially when painting, sculpture and photography were the more established paths. NC: There were some reference points, but at some point, those reference points have to become motors of their own. India has an enormous tradition of performance through dance, theatre, ritual, and the performing arts. But what was perhaps missing was a critical contemporary discourse around performance as an art practice. RP: I suppose what I'm really asking is how you were received when you first decided to pursue this path. NC: What happened in India at that moment was that the stage was set. The audience was ready. There was an immense openness to receive new ideas and to reconsider what contemporary art practice could mean from a South Asian perspective. There was a real desire for something fresh, something new, a different direction. Somehow, I fit into that moment. It was a little like a Cinderella story, the shoe was there, and somebody needed to try it on. “IDENTITY IS MORE COMPLICATED THAN A LABEL” RP: But you were also part of that moment when artists were increasingly grouped together as "Indian artists.” NC: Yes, and that was something I was already thinking critically about. I kept asking myself whether I was being invited because I was saying something interesting within contemporary art, or because I was Indian. That troubled me. We're doing all this work to dissolve boundaries and challenge assumptions, yet I was constantly being framed as "the Indian artist" or "India's performance artist." I wanted people to simply say "performance artist." Not because I wanted to deny where I come from, many of the tropes and references in my work come directly from the history of the subcontinent, but because identity is more complicated than a label.

September 21, 2026 | Art & Culture SUMMER RENAISSANCE words Onur Baştürk In Summer Renaissance, Greek visual artist and photographer Michalis Goumas places the male body underwater — weightless, anonymous and almost outside time. Made in the Aegean, the long-running project draws on Renaissance imagery while exploring physical intimacy and the unpredictability of water. ANONYMITY, DESIRE AND THE AEGEAN Michalis Goumas has been working on Summer Renaissance for nearly two decades. Now gathered in a 200-page coffee-table book, the project began as an experiment in composition before developing into a study of the body, water and light. Much of the series was photographed around Kythnos, the island where Goumas grew up, with male figures swimming, touching and surrendering themselves to the sea. Photography and painting overlap throughout, as do classical references and the present. We spoke with Goumas about the project’s beginnings, his fascination with the male body, anonymity and desire, and the Aegean landscape that continues to inform his visual language. How did that early experiment evolve into the project we see today, and when did you realise it was becoming a larger body of work? In the beginning, it was more of an experiment in composition. I was interested in the human body as a visual element, creating digital compositions that carried something of the density and theatricality of Renaissance painting. I wanted to see whether a contemporary body could hold that kind of visual memory without simply reconstructing the past. Over the years, I began to remove rather than add. The digital construction gradually disappeared, and water took its place. Beneath the surface, many of the things I had previously tried to construct were already happening naturally: the body became weightless, light distorted it, gestures gained an unexpected grandeur, and a simple moment could suddenly evoke sculpture or painting. I think that was when Summer Renaissance truly began. I was no longer simply photographing people in the sea. I kept returning to the same idea through different bodies, summers and kinds of light. Eventually, the images began to speak to one another and form a visual language of their own. That was when I understood this was no longer just a series of photographs, but a body of work that could continue to evolve with me. FOR ME, WATER BECAME A KIND OF COLLABORATOR What drew you to these two elements — water and the body — and how does that relationship connect, for you, to the representation of the body in Renaissance painting? Water changes the body without asking it to perform. That was what fascinated me from the beginning. Underwater, the body loses some of its gravity, its certainty, even its contemporary identity. Limbs stretch, gestures become slower and light fragments the figure in ways that are impossible to fully control. That transformation naturally brought me back to Renaissance painting, where the human body is never merely anatomical. It carries emotion, drama, sensuality, spirituality and an almost architectural presence within the composition. I was interested in finding a contemporary equivalent of that feeling without recreating Renaissance imagery literally. For me, water became a kind of collaborator. It allows the body to move between something very physical and something almost mythological. A person swimming in the Aegean can, for a fraction of a second, appear to belong to another century. That brief suspension of time is probably at the heart of Summer Renaissance. MY FIGURES OFTEN RESEMBLE WARRIORS The male body is such a strong presence throughout Summer Renaissance. What does the male body mean to you as an artist, and what continues to draw you to it as a subject? What draws me to the male body is the sense of energy and presence it can bring to an image. My figures often resemble warriors, as if they are constantly fighting against an invisible force. We are all fighting something: some win, some are defeated, some rise back to the surface, while others disappear into the dark depths. I am interested in that transition from strength and resistance to surrender, when struggle and the loss of control can coexist within the same body. THE DIRECTION I GIVE IS MORE ATMOSPHERIC THAN CHOREOGRAPHED There is something distinctly physical about the way male bodies come together in these photographs. They swim, touch, embrace and sometimes seem to be caught somewhere between choreography and play. What kind of direction, if any, do you give the people you photograph before they enter the water? Before each shoot, I look for locations with clear water, the right depth, colour and light, because the environment largely determines how the bodies will move within the image. The direction I give is more atmospheric than choreographed. I often film myself moving underwater to suggest a certain quality of movement, and I sometimes show paintings to the swimmers, not for them to imitate, but to communicate the mood, tension or overall feeling I am looking for. From that point on, I leave enough space for the water and the bodies themselves to shape what happens. DESIRE IS NOT NECESSARILY SEXUAL How much of what we see is constructed and how much is left to chance? I’m particularly curious about the faces: in some photographs, they seem almost deliberately obscured or absent. Is anonymity part of the work, or is this simply something that emerges through movement, water and light? I like anonymity because it allows the viewer to read the image freely, without being tied to a specific person or a specific story. Very often, what someone sees or feels is far removed from the actual circumstances of the shoot, and that interests me deeply. More generally, this is something I value in art: the moment when a story I had never even imagined begins to take shape in someone else’s mind through my work. From that point on, the image no longer belongs entirely to me. Desire seems to run quietly through Summer Renaissance. There is water, the body, physical proximity and a very direct kind of nudity, yet the images never feel overtly sexual. How do you think about desire within the work? For me, desire in Summer Renaissance is not necessarily sexual. It is more about an attraction to the body, to closeness, touch, water, even to something that cannot be held onto. I like it to exist as an underlying tension within the image, without ever needing to be fully explained. KYTHNOS AS A WAY OF SEEING As I understand it, you photographed Summer Renaissance in the Aegean, primarily around Kythnos, where you grew up. What kind of island is Kythnos to you? Kythnos is not simply a place for me, but a way of seeing. I grew up with its light, bare stone, wind and sea, so all of these became part of me long before they became part of my work. I don’t see it as a picturesque Cycladic island. To me, it has something more austere, elemental and almost timeless. It can be incredibly beautiful, but also harsh, and perhaps that is why I keep returning to it. In Summer Renaissance, Kythnos is not a backdrop. It is part of the image itself. The book feels like more than a record of a photographic project; it also seems to reflect a very personal idea of beauty. Is Summer Renaissance, in some way, a product of your own fascination with beauty? And what does beauty mean to you today? Yes, definitely. Summer Renaissance was born largely from my own fascination with beauty, though not beauty as perfection. I am more interested in those moments when something becomes beautiful because it is fragile, temporary and impossible to repeat in exactly the same way. Today, I think of beauty less in terms of harmony and more in terms of the intensity and truth of an image. It can exist in a body, a gesture, an imperfection or a fleeting moment of light. Perhaps that is why I keep searching for it. MY VISUAL WORLD COMES FROM WHERE I GREW UP Where does your visual world come from? What do you find yourself returning to again and again for inspiration? My visual world comes largely from the place where I grew up. I was raised on an island, in a seafaring family, with grandfathers who were sailors and fishermen, so the sea was never simply a landscape to me. It was part of everyday life. Water, humidity, the oxidation of copper, the colours of rust, stone and the intensity of Greek light keep returning in my work, both in photography and painting. At the same time, I am influenced by classical art, sculpture, cinema, photography and design. Together, all of these form a visual vocabulary that I carry with me and that often returns, almost unconsciously, in everything I create. BETWEEN PAINTING AND PHOTOGRAPHY You are both a painter and a photographer, and Summer Renaissance seems to sit somewhere between the two. When you look through the book now, do you see it primarily as a photographer, or is the painter in you still shaping the way you read these images? I would say the two ways of seeing are now impossible to separate. When I photograph, I often think like a painter: about composition, masses, colour, light and the relationship between bodies. And when I paint, I carry with me the immediacy and unpredictability of photography. Looking at Summer Renaissance today, I don’t see it purely as a photographic work. For me, the images exist somewhere between the two media, and perhaps that is exactly where their identity lies. After working on Summer Renaissance for almost two decades, what has the project revealed to you about yourself? Do you think the way you look at bodies, intimacy, beauty or even the Aegean has changed through making it? Perhaps the most important thing it revealed to me is that a work that lasts this long eventually begins to observe you as well. You think you are recording something outside yourself, but after years you realise that, without noticing it, it has also recorded the way you have changed.

September 21, 2026 | DESIGN & INTERIORS a SAO PAULO APARTMENT AMONG the TREETOPS words Noah Mercer photos Carolina Lacaz In São Paulo’s Jardins district, Kiko Castello Branco Arquitetura reworks a 340-square-metre apartment around openness, Brazilian design and surrounding greenery. Travertine, warm timber and a layered furniture selection create a natural sense of continuity. Set on the fourth floor of a corner building, AC Apartment sits almost level with the surrounding tree canopy. That proximity to the landscape became a starting point for Kiko Castello Branco Arquitetura, which had previously worked with the owners — a couple with two daughters — on the guest house of their countryside retreat. The original plan is formed by two volumes rotated at 45 degrees and joined by a central winter garden, with social and private areas occupying separate wings. Rather than undoing that structure, the architects opened sightlines and softened the transitions between spaces. OPENING THE PLAN The change is apparent as soon as the lift doors open. Walls around the entrance hall were removed, allowing the living areas to come into view immediately, while partitions leading towards the bedrooms were replaced by rounded corners. One of the former bedrooms was incorporated into the social area and converted into a home cinema. The winter garden was also reconsidered. Heavy mullions gave way to glazing with concealed profiles, making the greenery feel less like a framed view and more like an extension of the interior. Travertine flooring and a slatted Louro Pardo timber ceiling continue across the social spaces, tying the rooms together. At one end, the winter garden draws the surrounding canopy into the room. At the other, a long Michelangelo Bordeaux marble sideboard runs along the wall, echoed by a custom bench beneath the windows that combines stone plinths with upholstered seating. Together, these elements give the open plan structure without dividing it. BRAZILIAN DESIGN ACROSS GENERATIONS The furniture brings together different moments in Brazilian design rather than adhering to a single period. Pieces by Eduardo Chalabi, Roberta Banqueri and Jader Almeida sit alongside designs by Sergio Rodrigues, Percival Lafer and Jorge Zalszupin, with works by Mula Preta Studio and Isabelle de Mari completing the living room. The mix feels collected rather than overly composed. Off-white, green and caramel upholstery sits against warm timber, while works by Arthur Grangeia and Domingos Tótora introduce another layer. Throughout, the trees outside remain a constant presence. STONE, TIMBER AND A SCARPA REFERENCE The dining room continues the same dialogue between Brazilian design and bespoke architecture. At its centre is Jorge Zalszupin’s 3.5-metre Guanabara table, sourced from an antique dealer and paired with Bernardo Figueiredo’s Prima chairs and Arthur Casas’ Amorfa pendant. Catuaba wood cabinetry follows the building’s structural rhythm, concealing storage, a bar and a stone sink behind an almost uninterrupted surface. Pocket doors open onto the kitchen, enlarged by removing the former pantry and part of the service area. A timber-and-stone island combines food preparation with informal dining, while the floor introduces a less expected reference: small Bege Bahia marble tiles set in terrazzo grout, inspired by Carlo Scarpa’s floor for the Olivetti Showroom in Venice.

September 21, 2026 | DESIGN & INTERIORS CASA MAGMA words Noah Mercer photos Pedro Ocanhas For CASACOR São Paulo 2026, SUITE Arquitetos conceived Casa MAGMA for Portinari as a 215-square-metre interior where curved architecture, mineral surfaces and custom-designed elements form a continuous, tactile landscape. Casa MAGMA has a deliberately introspective quality. Designed by SUITE Arquitetos — Carolina Mauro, Daniela Frugiuele, Luiza Monari and Filipe Troncon — the project begins with the idea of shelter, but interprets comfort through more than softness. Lowered ceilings, curved walls, earthy tones and textured surfaces create a sense of enclosure, while the materials gradually reveal their depth as you move through the space. INSIDE CASACOR SAO PAULO Founded in São Paulo in 1987, CASACOR has grown into one of the Americas’ leading platforms for architecture, interiors and landscape design. Each edition brings together architects, interior designers and landscape designers to create individual spaces within a shared setting, often in collaboration with design brands. For the 2026 São Paulo edition, themed “Mind and Heart,” SUITE Arquitetos approached Casa MAGMA not as a sequence of separate rooms, but as connected atmospheres. The living room, dining area, master suite and tea bar unfold around a central space the architects describe as the heart of the project, while sculptural volumes and rounded transitions soften the boundaries between them. A ROOM AT THE CENTRE The shift in mood begins at the entrance. Burgundy velvet curtains, reddish tones and textured surfaces create a darker, more contained threshold before a large curved wall draws the eye towards the main living area. Clad in Portinari’s Vestígios Decor Mix, its three-dimensional surface takes its cue from geological strata, turning an architectural divider into one of the defining elements of the interior. Beyond it, the living room sits slightly below the surrounding floor. Rounded sofas and dense rugs gather around the centre, while broad curves replace hard divisions. Portinari’s Argilas porcelain runs through the central core, with colours drawn from Brazil’s coast, forests and cerrado. A fireplace finished in Petra Fóssil anchors the room and adds another mineral note. Rather than functioning as decoration, the surfaces establish the rhythm of the interior. Furniture, architecture and finishes are closely interwoven, working within a restrained vocabulary of curves, recesses, muted colour and contrasts in texture. FROM SURFACE TO OBJECT At the rear, the kitchen, dining area and tea bar form a more open sequence, linked by diffuse lighting, earthy tones and mineral finishes. A Supra Hide sink by Deca is integrated into the countertop, while the pendant above the island takes the project’s material language beyond floors and walls. Based on SUITE Arquitetos’ Hydria design, it was reworked for Casa MAGMA using natural crystals and tubes made from Portinari Petra. It is one of the project’s more interesting moves. Stone is treated not simply as a finish, but as something that can become an object, a detail or a source of light. The same thinking continues throughout Casa MAGMA, where Portinari’s ceramic coverings and sintered stones move between architecture, furniture and sculptural elements. A QUIETER PRIVATE ZONE The master suite shifts the atmosphere once more. Described by the architects as a “contemporary den,” it feels lighter and more protected, with curved portals, pale fabrics and natural materials replacing the darker intensity of the entrance. Behind the bed, Argilas Decor SRD porcelain introduces an irregular linear texture, while Nogueira Bourbon by Duratex continues through the woodwork. Casa MAGMA is most convincing when its material richness is allowed to remain quiet. The surfaces are expressive, but the overall language stays controlled. Curves recur without becoming ornamental; earthy colours bring warmth without pushing the interior towards rusticity. What remains is a strong sense of continuity between architecture, furniture and finish — less a collection of individual objects than a single, enveloping interior.

YUZU Magazine is an independent publication exploring architecture, interiors, design, travel, art and contemporary culture from around the world. CURRENT ISSUE VOL-19 BUY NOW HIGHLIGHTS CALIFORNIA QUIET VERMELHO BIRIBINHAS HOUSE OPENSPACE GIORGOS SAMOILIS LE SIRENUSE MARE ART & CULTURE SUMMER RENAISSANCE ART & CULTURE NIKHIL CHOPRA the FICTION of SELF DESIGN & INTERIORS COLORADO HOME DESIGN & INTERIORS a SAO PAULO APARTMENT AMONG the TREETOPS DESIGN & INTERIORS CASA MAGMA DESIGN & INTERIORS HOUSE of LIGHT DESIGN & INTERIORS a HOME SHAPED by FIVE GARDENS PEOPLE the RHYTHM of 10AM ART & CULTURE MEMENTO FLORIS DESIGN & INTERIORS LIGHT in MOTION ART & CULTURE INDIA MANY INDIAS, ONE EXHIBITION DESIGN & INTERIORS LAND, MEMORY, HOME More Content DESIGN & INTERIORS See More YUZU FILM See More TRAVEL See More WHERE YOU CAN FIND US EUROPE FRANCE: Paris UK: London SPAIN: Barcelona, Madrid, Bilbao. PORTUGAL: Lisbon, Porto. BELGIUM: Antwerp, Brussels, Gent, Zaventem. GERMANY: Berlin. TURKIYE: -Istanbul All Minoa Bookstores (Akaretler, Nişantaşı, Beyoğlu Tepebaşı, Maslak, Bağdat Caddesi, Etiler) Bey Karaköy Petra Gayrettepe -Bodrum Gibi Bodrum US CA / Los Angeles, San Diego, San Jose, Sacramento, Roseville. NY / New York, New Hartford. FL / Miami, Orlando, Jacksonville, Fort Myers, Fort Lauderdale. GA / Atlanta, AZ / Phoenix, WA / Seattle CANADA Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal. O nline Shop and Subscription YUZU SHOP CURRENT ISSUE VOL-19 BUY NOW

Art and culture coverage from YUZU Magazine: contemporary exhibitions, artist interviews, biennales and museum shows from galleries around the world. ART & CULTURE SUMMER RENAISSANCE NIKHIL CHOPRA the FICTION of SELF MEMENTO FLORIS INDIA MANY INDIAS, ONE EXHIBITION GIUSEPPE LO SCHIAVO SUSPICIOUS REALITY SIMON FUJIWARA THE ARCHITECTURE OF EXPERIENCE ALINE BOUVY AMUSEMENT AS METHOD PETER BUGGENHOUT HAUSER & WIRTH MENORCA THE STORIES CLAY CARRIES NOMAD HAMPTONS: HIGHLIGHTS AN ART FAIR SHAPED BY THE ISLAND CAN IBIZA 2026 BIG SEE AND THE RIGHT AMOUNT GOKHAN TANRIOVER WAITING TO BE A FLOWER UNDERNEATH THE FIG TREE BEAUTY as PROTEST in VENICE ART PARIS’S RETURN TO THE GRAND PALAIS: MEASURED YET AMBITIOUS SCULPTURES that RESEMBLE FURNITURE ART PARIS 2026: LANGUAGE, REPARATION, DESIGN THE WORLD RISES THROUGH PLEASURE DIRIYAH CONTEMPORARY ART BIENNALE 2026 Show More

François Farcy presents Memento Floris at Galerie Anthologie in Paris, uniting painting, sculpture, scent and an original soundtrack by Arthur Phanel. September 5, 2026 | Art & Culture MEMENTO FLORIS With Memento Floris, François Farcy will explore memory beyond the image. words Onur Baştürk We have never documented our lives more obsessively, yet perhaps never been less present within them. In Memento Floris, François Farcy will explore how memory is carried through colour, material, music and scent. Flowers — rooted in memories of his grandmother’s house and garden — will form a thread between childhood, absence and the passage of time. Presented at Galerie Anthologie in Paris from September 23–27, the exhibition will bring together painting, sculpture, an original soundtrack by Arthur Phanel and an olfactory work within a single sensory landscape. TO TRULY FEEL THE PRESENT MOMENT Do you think this constant need to document our lives is changing the way we remember them? It changes things a lot. I think we often focus more on trying to record a moment than actually experiencing it. And emotions play an important role in the way our brain creates memories. You only have to look at people during the Bastille Day fireworks, for example: so many are watching them through a screen. In a way, we lose part of the reality of the experience, and our perception of the moment becomes altered. I think we need to be fully present to really experience a moment and all its beauty. Of course, photographs and recordings can also be beautiful ways of recalling certain moments later on. But remembering something is very different from simply looking back at an image. With Memento Floris, I want people to reconnect with that idea: to truly feel the present moment and allow memory to reconstruct it through all our senses. THE MEMORY OF FLOWERS Flowers have been part of your work for some time, rooted in memories of your grandmother’s house and garden. What is it about them that still allows you to speak about memory, absence and transmission without becoming simply symbolic? Flowers are symbolic for me, of course, because they naturally speak about the cycles of life: blooming, flourishing, fading, disappearing and returning. But at the same time, they are not only symbols. They are also very real elements of my memories. The flowers I paint bring me back to specific times, places and seasons from my childhood in Neufmoulin, in the Somme region of France, through their colours, scents, textures and the way they change over time. Poppies in the fields immediately take me back to summer and to the fields in front of my grandmother Christiane Granger’s house. Flowers covered with frost or morning dew can evoke winter, or the chill of early autumn. For me, flowers carry memory through many different senses. They are visual, but also olfactory and emotional. Sometimes a smell or a colour can bring something back much more vividly than a photograph. That is why I keep returning to them. They allow me to speak about the passing of time and the cycles of life, but they are also deeply connected to real experiences and memories. They are not simply symbols that I place into the work; they are already part of the memories themselves. BEYOND THE CANVAS For this exhibition, painting moves beyond the canvas into sculpture, sound and scent. At what point did you realise that painting alone was no longer enough to express what you wanted Memento Floris to become? Whenever I visited a painting exhibition, I felt that something was missing: smell, and more generally the involvement of the other senses. I always thought it would be beautiful to experience an exhibition in a more complete way, with all of my senses activated. I’m very sensitive to these things, so I can sometimes recreate those sensations in my mind quite easily. A smell, a light, an image or even a certain atmosphere can take me back in time. But I know this does not happen as naturally for everyone, and that is partly what made me want to explore the idea more deeply through Memento Floris. What I really hope is that people leave the exhibition having rediscovered a memory they had forgotten. There is something almost magical about remembering something you thought was lost, as if it had been stored somewhere inside you, in a kind of inner library, and suddenly a word, an image, a perfume or a certain light gives you access to it again. Personally, I have also been craving a stronger connection to my own past. I want to remember more, and I have become increasingly attentive to what my senses capture around me. At the same time, it felt urgent to develop this concept now, in a society that is becoming increasingly digital. We are constantly looking at the world through screens, and I find that slightly frightening. The soundtrack, composed by Arthur Phanel under your artistic direction, was conceived to resonate with the paintings rather than illustrate them. How did that dialogue between image and music develop, and what could sound express that the paintings could not? Music has become incredibly important in my life; today, I would even say it feels vital. Sound has this extraordinary ability to bring back a memory almost instantly. The simple sound of a church bell, for example, can take me back to the church near my grandmother’s village: to a happy Easter Sunday celebration, or even to her funeral. In that sense, music can take you through time just as powerfully as smell, colour or any other sensory experience. What I wanted with Memento Floris was for people to enter a kind of bubble as they move through the exhibition. I don’t want the music to explain the paintings or tell people what they are supposed to feel. I want to show the works, let the music do its own magic, and allow people to connect with their own memories and interpretations. The dialogue with Arthur developed very naturally. I shared the paintings, the memories and the ideas behind the exhibition with him, but I wanted him to have the freedom to respond to the project in his own artistic language. What interested us was precisely what music could add without explaining anything. The paintings are fixed, while sound introduces time, movement and expectation. We wanted the music to carry the concept of Memento Floris into another medium, creating another emotional layer around the paintings — something perhaps more instinctive. The paintings and the music do not explain one another; they coexist. Somewhere between the two, I hope each visitor can find something that belongs to their own memory. MADELEINES FROM MY GRANDMOTHER’S KITCHEN Scent can trigger memory instantly. Is there a particular smell that takes you straight back to a person, place or moment? The smell that takes me back most instantly is that of madeleines fresh from the oven in my grandmother’s kitchen. That warm, golden smell of cake takes me straight back to my childhood. For me, it is an incredibly happy smell, but also one that belongs to a time that has passed. It carries the presence of my grandparents and takes me back to a younger, more innocent version of myself, when life felt simple and I had no real responsibilities. At the time, I did not realise how happy I was. Looking back, I think it was one of the happiest periods of my life. What fascinates me is that a smell can bring back much more than an image. It can suddenly restore an entire atmosphere, a person, a place and even the feeling of who you were at that moment. Before you have time to think about it, the memory is already there.

Curated by Hervé Perdriolle at Cadaval Palace in Évora, INDIA places contemporary Indian art alongside tribal and vernacular practices. September 5, 2026 | Art & Culture INDIA MANY INDIAS, ONE EXHIBITION words Onur Baştürk photos Francisco Nogueira At the Palace of the Dukes of Cadaval in Évora, INDIA brings together contemporary Indian art with tribal and vernacular practices, tracing the many languages, traditions and contradictions that shape artistic life across the subcontinent today. On view until 25 October, INDIA brings together around fifteen artists from different regions and artistic contexts across the subcontinent. Contemporary practices appear alongside tribal and vernacular traditions, challenging the distinctions that have long separated these forms of expression and placing them within the same contemporary conversation. DIFFERENT WORLDS, SIDE BY SIDE The exhibition also draws on the long relationship between Portugal and India. More than five centuries of maritime routes, cultural exchange and mutual influence provide a historical backdrop, but INDIA is firmly concerned with the present. Rather than looking at the country through an exotic or purely historical lens, it considers how artistic practices rooted in very different cultural traditions continue to evolve and intersect today. At the heart of the exhibition is this coexistence of different worlds. Artists educated in India’s metropolitan art schools are shown alongside artists from tribal communities whose practices remain closely connected to ritual and inherited traditions. Curator Hervé Perdriolle approaches their relationship through the idea of “fertilisation”: not as opposing languages, but as practices that have continually informed one another. The range is deliberately broad. The animist-rooted paintings of Jangarh Singh Shyam and Jivya Soma Mashe sit alongside Parag Sonarghare’s hyperrealist portraits and tantric paintings in which abstraction meets spirituality. Tradition and experimentation, ritual and contemporary life, spirituality and social observation all occupy the same exhibition. A PARALLEL UNIVERSE TO THE REST OF THE WORLD For Alexandra de Cadaval, who oversees cultural affairs at the Palace and is also one of its owners, INDIA carries a deeply personal dimension. Her relationship with India spans more than two decades, shaped by repeated journeys through its urban and rural landscapes and by her work as co-director of the World Sacred Spirit Festival in Nagaur and Jodhpur. “It was thanks to Alain Weber that I first discovered the world of Indian arts, initially through music, and gradually through the visual arts, opening for me a lifelong journey into the immense cultural richness of the subcontinent. India has always felt to me like a parallel universe to the rest of the world, where ancient traditions and extreme modernity meet with remarkable intensity. After Portugal, it is the country that has most profoundly marked me.” That experience also explains the exhibition’s resistance to any single image of India. Alexandra de Cadaval describes a country of profound contrasts, where social inequality and complexity exist alongside extraordinary creativity, humanity and spiritual depth. Rather than attempting to define India, the exhibition leaves room for these contradictions to remain visible. BEYOND WESTERN NARRATIVES INDIA also continues a direction the Cadaval Palace has pursued since 2018, bringing contemporary art into conversation with vernacular, rural and tribal practices. The Palace is conceived here not simply as an exhibition space, but as a place where artistic traditions and geographies that are often kept apart can meet. Hervé Perdriolle has spent decades working precisely within this territory. A critic, collector and curator, he lived in India during the 1990s and has long researched practices that developed outside academic systems and dominant Western narratives. His curatorial position rests on the understanding that contemporary art is not exclusively Western, but emerges independently across many different cultural contexts. The collaboration between Perdriolle and Alexandra de Cadaval had been taking shape for years. As de Cadaval recalls: “I first met Hervé Perdriolle seven years ago, and from the beginning, we shared the dream of creating an exhibition together in Évora. I would also like to warmly thank Maximiliano Modesti, whose enthusiasm, encouragement and support helped make this project a reality.” TWENTY-FIVE YEARS WITH INDIA For the Palace, the exhibition also marks another chapter in a relationship with India that reaches well beyond the visual arts. De Cadaval adds: “Over the past twenty-five years, the Palacio Cadaval has maintained a close relationship with India through music, performance and artistic exchange. To present India today as a central focus of our programme, on the eve of Évora’s year as European Capital of Culture, carries special meaning for us.”

Peter Buggenhout speaks to Rajesh Punj about his sculpture in The Only True Protest Is Beauty at Fondazione Dries Van Noten in Venice, Italy. August 10, 2026 | Art & Culture PETER BUGGENHOUT words Rajesh Punj photos Ugo Carmeni (FDVN Venezia 2026) Belgian artist Peter Buggenhout is among the artists featured in The Only True Protest Is Beauty, the inaugural exhibition of Fondazione Dries Van Noten at Venice's Palazzo Pisani Moretta, on view until 4 October 2026. In this conversation, he reflects on material, perception and why a sculpture can never be understood from a single point of view. AFTERMATH If the history of sculpture has long been tethered to endurance, where method and material manifest meaning, then Belgian artist Peter Buggenhout begins precisely at the point of collapse, when matter loses its place and original purpose. In his book Minima Moralia: Reflections on a Damaged Life, German philosopher Theodor W. Adorno coined the aphorism “the whole is the false”, arguing that what collapses is not just matter but the very idea of coherence. Essentially, what we hold to be true is always subject to change, and Buggenhout asserts through his work an aftermath of unease and serene ugliness. If his materials have long since died, these are their ghosts taking their place back in reality. His works challenge what we understand sculpture to be: rooted and reassuring, rising from the ground up, restless and unresolved; burdened by their former selves. Stripped of their original identity—even beauty—Buggenhout’s assemblages reek of the end of everything, and for that he sees them as faceless and formless. As he explains, “you’re never finished with a piece,” insisting “you can walk around it many times… and from every position it changes.” What is presented is far from a complete object that sits on the boundary between art and the audience, but an ever-emerging entity that burrows into the mind, tormenting the visual ease with which we see and receive the world. Blackened and bludgeoned accumulations of materials resist the possibility of any fixed lexicon or language, refusing to settle into a single meaning. Installed within the eighteenth-century interiors of Palazzo Pisani Moretta on Venice’s Grand Canal, as part of former fashion designer Dries Van Noten’s inaugural exhibition The Only True Protest Is Beauty, Buggenhout’s assemblages challenge the building’s illusion of grandeur. The palazzo, as he observes, is filled from top to bottom with marble, yet “mainly fake and painted marble.” A space shaped by the theatrical ambitions of the eighteenth century, where “everything was about hiding the structure underneath… to make you dream away reality.” Against this backdrop, his work—dense, dirt-filled, abject and unattractive—might be expected to confront the decoration and decorum of the palatial rooms. And yet, as Buggenhout states, “you would expect a clash of characters… yet, strangely enough, it merges. It blends.” Here, the histories of different materials rub shoulders in a homage to what the future leaves behind. AUTONOMY BEFORE DIALOGUE I’ve only seen a few images of the Palazzo, and, more importantly, not so much of your work installed within it. And it’s such a particular space, so charged historically and visually, that I’m curious to understand how your work is entering into that context. What are you showing there? The piece is part of a series, I am a Tablet. It consists of two marble elements. It fits quite well in the Palazzo, because there’s a lot of marble there, but it mainly fake and painted marble. A space shaped by the theatrical ambitions of the eighteenth century, where everything was about hiding the structure underneath… to make you dream away reality. Against this backdrop, his work, dense, dirt-filled, abject and unattractive, you would expect to confront the decoration and decorum of the palatial rooms. And yet, as Buggenhout sites, “you would expect a clash of characters… yet, strangely enough way, it merges. It blends. That’s interesting, because one would almost assume a kind of opposition, between that language of illusion, of surface, of a kind of seduction even, and your work, which insists so strongly on material presence, on weight, on exposure rather than concealment. And yet what you’re describing is not a resistance, but a kind of absorption, or coexistence. And in practical terms, how did you arrive at the placement of the work? Did you need to spend time in the Palazzo, to understand how the piece might inhabit those rooms? I went there, and I made some mock-ups, like collage proposals, where I placed images of my work into photographs of the space. From that I made a proposal for how it might be. And then I decided to make this piece especially for that space, taking into account how it would look there. MANY GATES, MANY KEYS And were you aware of the other artists’ works, for The Only True Protest is Beauty exhibition, in relation to yours? Or were you thinking more independently of that dialogue? Not really. I tend to do the same thing every time. Years ago, I was invited to a group show at Gladstone Gallery, New York in 2012, curated by Ugo Rondinone, and I was told ‘just act as if it’s a solo show’, and everything else will be draped around it. And I did the same here. I knew there would be textiles, fashion, photography, smaller works in a big Palazzo, so I thought maybe I should do the same thing, bring in something large and let it define itself. That’s quite a decisive position, to effectively suspend the idea of dialogue in favour of asserting the work’s own autonomy. And perhaps that’s what allows it to then enter into relation on its own terms, rather than being shaped in advance by what surrounds it. I can imagine, though, that your work carries a very particular kind of presence in that setting, not only physically, in terms of scale and weight, but also atmospherically. I don’t know, because I installed everything before the other works were there. I was the first to install, so I didn’t see that confrontation. For me, the work always finds a way to connect. I often compare my work to a castle with many gates. To get in, you need a key, but there are many keys. Once you find one, you’re in. And it doesn’t matter if the work is shown with medieval art, or land art, or whatever, there’s always a key that fits somewhere, and it connects. WHERE MATERIALS MEET That’s a powerful image, the idea that the work doesn’t prescribe a single point of entry, but instead offers multiple ways in, depending on the viewer and the moment. It suggests that meaning isn’t fixed, but continuously activated through encounter. When I think back to the works I’ve seen, especially when we spoke before at Axel Vervoort, what stays with me is their strong sense of presence. The way the materials come together doesn’t feel composed in a traditional sense, but almost as if they’ve arrived at a state of necessity. I’m interested in how that happens for you: how these materials, so disparate in themselves, begin to take on such a unified force. Is there a moment in the process when you recognise that something is coming together, or does it remain open even then? Well, I think one thing that is quite important is that I consider every part of the piece, every material, as something autonomous. It has to remain autonomous, and it has to remain what it is, in its own natural behaviour. But what is really important is how things touch each other, how two materials, or colours, or feelings, bump into each other. The way they meet. They can intertwine, or they can caress, or they can clash, really press against each other. All these different possibilities of what a border can be between two things. And this is multiplied across many materials, many sensations. That’s why you cannot explain the whole piece in one word. It’s too many things at once, not only the materials, but also the borders between them, which are always shifting and changing. So, it’s not the elements themselves, but the relationships between them, the points of contact, that generate meaning. Almost as if the work exists in those tensions, in those thresholds, rather than in the materials alone. And perhaps that’s why, as a viewer, the experience never quite resolves. Yes, exactly. You can walk around it many times, six times, ten times, and every time it changes. Even during the day, with different light, it changes. You’re never finished with a piece. And I think this also has to do with how we try to simplify things. We always try to reduce things so that we can understand them. But then we don’t really understand them, we just reduce them. I often say, the world we live in is not a globe. The globe is already a simplification. The real world is much more like my pieces, it’s pushing and pulling and stretching, everything interacting at once. It’s far more complex than a simple shape. THERE IS NO FRONT That’s a striking way of putting it, that the work resists the kind of reduction we rely on to make sense of things. And that in a way, it asks the viewer to remain within that complexity, rather than resolving it too quickly. It also makes me think about language, about the difficulty of speaking about the work at all. Because the moment we begin to describe it, we’re already simplifying it, reducing it to something more stable than it actually is. Yes, exactly. If you can describe it completely, then it’s already a reduction. That’s also why you cannot really photograph the work, because from another side, it’s completely different. When you install a piece, do you think about where the viewer first meets it? There is no front. The pieces are front on every side. I’m very careful about that. If you can only see it from one side, then you don’t really understand the piece. You have to move around it.

Matteo Pazzagli covers Ralph Pucci's Primal Mysteries in Miami, featuring handcrafted designs by Patrick Naggar and art by Marjorie Salvaterra. December 2024 | Art & Culture FOR TURKISH RALPH PUCCI’s MIAMI MOMENT: a SHOWCASE of BOLD DESIGN words Matteo Pazzagli A Quick Reminder for Those Who Might Have Missed It During the Art Basel Miami Rush: RALPH PUCCI, during Art Basel Miami Beach, unveiled Primal Mysteries—its first in-house collection in nearly a decade. If you missed the buzz, the exhibition continues at the brand’s striking new 10,000-square-foot gallery in Wynwood, which opened in December 2023. The gallery features fresh creations by the studio’s Manhattan-based sculptors, alongside vibrant contributions from collaborators Marjorie Salvaterra and Patrick Naggar. A JOURNEY TO THE ROOTS OF CREATIVITY Primal Mysteries is more than a furniture collection—it’s a homage to the timeless essence of art. Drawing inspiration from modernist masters like Giacometti and Brancusi while paying tribute to ancient cultural expressions, the pieces exude a raw, handcrafted energy. The focus? Sculptural lighting and tables that are grounded yet refined. Each piece is crafted by hand at RALPH PUCCI’s Manhattan studio. Standouts like the Giant Mask and Primal Chandelier offer a refreshing antidote to today’s overly digital world with their tactile, earthy vibe. MARJORIE SALVATERRA California-based photographer Marjorie Salvaterra, known for her ability to explore the multifaceted roles demanded of women through black-and-white imagery, surprises with Sheila in Technicolor. This surreal series drenched in bold, commanding hues delves into the complexities and contradictions of modern womanhood. PATRICK NAGGAR A longtime RALPH PUCCI collaborator, Patrick Naggar once again demonstrates why he’s a design icon. Known for blending historical and cultural references with modern aesthetics, Naggar’s contributions include fresh tones for his Amalfi and Positano chairs, alongside elegant new designs like the Floral Chandelier and Twisted Stem Wall Sconces.

Design and interiors stories from YUZU Magazine: architect-designed houses, apartments, hotels and studios, with the designers and materials behind them. DESIGN & INTERIORS COLORADO HOME a SAO PAULO APARTMENT AMONG the TREETOPS CASA MAGMA HOUSE of LIGHT a HOME SHAPED by FIVE GARDENS LIGHT in MOTION LAND, MEMORY, HOME TWO WAYS of LIVING at the OWO TEKOÁ HOUSE BRUTALIST LIVING in MALLORCA a SOFT MODERNIST TOUCH CASA B a WELCOMING LABYRINTH MY HIGHLIGHTS from 3daysofdesign 2026 BIRIBINHAS HOUSE UPWARDS to the MEDITERRANEAN a QUIET CALIFORNIA RHYTHM REDESIGNING DINING at the BODRUM EDITION a SENSE of MEASURE VILLA CLARISSE a FLOATING HOME in the FOREST Show More

September 19, 2026 | DESIGN & INTERIORS HOUSE of LIGHT words Noah Mercer photos Anson Smart stylist Claire Delmar production Karine Monié Surrounded by increasingly dense development in Melbourne, Jolson’s House of Light turns away from the conventional idea of an outlook. A three-storey planted courtyard instead brings landscape, daylight and privacy into the centre of the home. The owners had lived on the site, around five kilometres from central Melbourne, since 2005. Over time, apartment buildings rose around them, narrowing views, reducing daylight and eroding privacy. Rather than leave, they chose to reconsider what living on the site could mean. Designed by Melbourne architecture and interior design studio Jolson, the house does not attempt to recover what was lost. Instead, it creates another kind of outlook. At its centre, a three-level courtyard filled with plants, terraces and cascading greenery becomes both the visual focus of the house and its principal source of light. Completed after a six-year process, House of Light turns attention away from the surrounding city and towards vegetation, material, art and changing daylight. BUILDING THE VIEW The site has an earlier connection to Melbourne’s history. It was once occupied by converted stables built for horses that pulled some of the city’s first trams. Today, the house meets the street with a 14-metre-high façade composed of 26,000 handmade Spanish bricks. Variations in tone, irregular coursing and softly contoured openings give the surface a more fluid quality, while changing daylight accentuates the texture of the masonry. The transition inside is deliberately pronounced. For Stephen Jolson, founder and creative director of Jolson, the entrance marks a shift from urban density to a quieter interior condition. Beyond it, the courtyard takes over. Developed with landscape designer Florian Wild, the planting begins with a fernery below ground and rises through terraces and cascading vines. Over time, the vegetation is intended to form a loose veil between the rooms and the courtyard. LIGHT AS MATERIAL Natural light is one of the house’s primary organising elements. Rather than entering mainly from the perimeter, daylight is drawn vertically through the building and dispersed across pale, curved surfaces. Polished plaster walls shift between warm white and soft cream throughout the day, while the central stair carries light through several levels. Three flights rise beneath a curved, skylit ceiling, making the stair one of the clearest expressions of the project’s sectional approach. “The shifting tone of natural light across curved plaster, the cool touch of stone underfoot, and the softened acoustics of layered surfaces all work together to create a deeply emotive experience,” says Jolson. The house is arranged across five levels, from basement to third floor. The ground floor contains the entrance and a study facing the courtyard; bedrooms and bathrooms occupy the level above. In the main bedroom, an opening cut into the masonry captures sky and daylight without sacrificing privacy. A TACTILE INTERIOR The material palette relies on variation in texture rather than contrast. Silver Orion stone runs through the house in different finishes, while aged stone-oak veneer and hand-painted timber joinery bring warmth. Bronze appears selectively in frames, sliding doors and a ribbon-like handrail. Other details refer to the owners’ longstanding connection with horses and equestrian life. Woven natural-cord screens, saddle-leather joinery and hand-finished elements introduce these references without turning them into decoration. ARCHITECTURE FOR ART The house developed alongside the owners’ growing interest in contemporary art. Working with art consultant Swee Lim, they began collecting during the design process. The collection includes works by Sally Smart, Ben Quilty, Yang Yongliang, Marion Borgelt, Sarah Rayner, Alex Seton and First Nations artist Mantua Nangala, with recurring themes of nature, ecology and relationships to country. “Architecture is an act of interpretation not dissimilar to art,” says Jolson. “House of Light is a sculptural form that responds to its robust surroundings and creates a moment for pause and contemplation.”

Bodrum Coffee Table Book features The People of Bodrum, summer houses, Karnas Vineyards Hotel, Maçakızı and the peninsula's dining scene. THE PEOPLE OF BODRUM SAHİR EROZAN THE PEOPLE OF BODRUM ARDA ÖNEN THE PEOPLE OF BODRUM SİNAN BEY RANCH HOUSE BARBAROS RESERVE GASTRO & FUN KARNAS VINEYARDS HOUSE A MODERN & BOHEMIAN SUMMERHOUSE IN BITEZ HOUSE SPACIOUS, CALM AND ECOLOGICAL GASTRO & FUN TRATTORIA IL MANDARINO THE PEOPLE OF BODRUM KEREM YILMAZ HOUSE A SOPHISTICATED TOUCH FROM SANAYI 313 Print BODRUM - COFFEE TABLE BOOK Out of Stock View Details