Architecture tips

Amidst verdant green valleys and rugged mountains lies a remarkable piece of cultural heritage at the heart of Norway. Dating back to the late 12th century, Borgund Stave Church is an architectural masterpiece that has stood the test of time.

When one thinks of the quintessential English experience, images of Shakespearean drama in the heart of London or the elegance of the Cotswolds might first spring to mind. Yet, the true essence of England's rich history and cultural depth can also be found in the less trodden paths of the North.

The enormously popular Palm Springs Modernism Week with its open house tours may have just passed, but no worries if you couldn’t make it. So rich is the city’s and the surrounding Coachella Valley’s architectural heritage that there’s no end to discovering more on the masters who, beginning nearly a century ago, made all of today’s cherished Desert Modernism happen.

If Indiana Jones took a turn toward the elegant and developed an obsession with textiles, he might be a bit like Louis Barthélemy, the French illustrator and designer who travels to Africa and the Middle East to work with weavers and craftspeople who are skilled in traditional techniques. Ishkar, a London-based company that collaborates with NGOs and artisans to create job opportunities for those living in isolated areas of countries often affected by war, recently commissioned him to create a capsule collection with women weavers in Afghanistan. Barthélemy typically works with artisans in person to create tapestries or rugs but, since the Taliban retook power in 2021, he’s had to connect with the weavers remotely. At the start of their collaboration, Barthélemy asked the weavers to draw a place that symbolized beauty to them. Many of the women chose the 14th-century Bagh-e Babur (Babur’s Garden) in Kabul. Images from those drawings, and one by Barthélemy himself, were then combined to create the patterns for three different rugs. Each one took about six months for the women to hand knot from Ghazni Wool. They are, Barthélemy says, “a collective dream of an ancient paradise.”

All built within the last 150 years, these stunning buildings around the world are monuments that will stand the test of time.

Years ago, when I first strolled into Miami Beach’s swanky Fontainebleau, I felt a heightened pizzazz, aswirl in the kind of stimulating panache and prestige that trumpets: Pay attention! For travel lovers of glam getaways—especially those renowned as celeb and A-lister favorites—Fontainebleau Miami Beach is a legendary draw. Today, it continues to be a hotspot of cool goings-on, much expanded and revitalized again and again since its 1954 launch. A $1-billion makeover in 2008 wowed. “Every era of American history has its architectural touchstones, buildings that transcend their time and come to define a cultural moment,” says author Stephen Wallis in Fontainebleau, the newly published, silk-wrapped, oversized hardcover coffee table book (3.4-pounds) by luxury publisher Assouline, which celebrates the curvilinear-shaped resort’s illustrious past, present and forward leap. “The Fontainebleau hotel in Miami Beach is that kind of landmark,” he adds. “An instant sensation when it opened, it remains an enduring icon, repeatedly updated and evolving to this day.” With principal photography by Peter Arnell, who is Fontainebleau Development’s chief brand and design officer, this striking book highlights treasures and pleasures of the famous Florida oceanside symbol. Dive into its thick paper stock pages that are ripe with riveting photos and illustrations. Wallis engagingly writes about Fontainebleau’s history and mystery, deals and diversions, challenges and change-makers, imagination and innovation.

“Attractive people doing attractive things in attractive places.”

Part of the enduring appeal of Barcelona is the ease with which travelers can wander between neighborhoods.

The launch of new luxury trains shows no sign of slowing down, thanks to an obsession with slow travel, an appetite for nostalgia, and a taste for lavish interiors that harken back to the golden days of rail travel. Nothing epitomizes that better than the unveiling of the Orient Express La Dolce Vita later this year, a new “vintage-style” train that will travel around Italy on one—and two-night journeys.

The USA is a nation of immigrants, and there are plenty of places across the country with a distinctly European vibe.

“The house was already wonderful,” says Enrique Miró-Sans. He’s talking about the 17th-century residence that his family spent two years transforming into an intimate, lived-in hotel in the walled old city of Palma, Mallorca.

The joy of train travel is often about the journey – unless you're at these revamped rail stations, where the destination is the prize. 

It’s no secret that visitors to the United Arab Emirates associate the country more with sizzling Dubai than stately Abu Dhabi. Yet the UAE’s capital has never been one to chase pizzazz.

One of Istria’s most celebrated monuments is the Arena, the magnificent 1st century Roman amphitheater that’s a symbol of Pula, the peninsula’s biggest city. The sea-facing amphitheater is also an icon of ancient Rome, and the grandest and best-preserved example of how the Romans left their mark on Istria forever.

After being shuttered for seven years, the historic Salerno Costa d’Amalfi Airport is reopening its doors this summer as part of an architectural revamp and hub reboot aimed at providing better access to the Cilento area and environs.

Hanoi's Old Quarter has many constants, from its French Colonial architecture, Opera House and 1,000-year-old Temple of Literature to its vibrant street food and the chaotic two-, three- and four-wheel traffic that swirls all day and much of the night around picturesque Hoan Kiem Lake.

Located in Indigo Bay on the Dutch side of St. Maarten, Vie L’Ven is a collection of 280-units which will include fully furnished residences and a five-star resort that are architecturally designed with both the island’s Dutch and French influences.

Whether it’s through storytelling, technology advances, architecture, or artwork, we can see a reflection of human creativity and imagination, connecting us to our past while shaping our present and future experiences.

From its historical significance and architectural marvels to its status as a premier wedding destination and its vibrant cultural life, Venice offers a unique experience that is both deeply rooted in its past and vibrantly alive in the present.

With the release of Dune: Part Two, audiences will return to Arrakis and find it largely unchanged. As in the first film, the desert planet is compiled largely of plots of Earth we know as Jordan’s Wadi Rum and Abu Dhabi. This time around, however, we get to go deeper. As Paul Atreides and his mother Lady Jessica (Timothee Chalamet and Rebecca Ferguson, respectively) assimilate to life amongst the Indigenous Fremen people, they unlock access to parts of the planet previously unknown to outsiders.

The Hawaii-born artist Toshiko Takaezu was known for her ceramic works that redefined the genre with their “closed forms,” as she called them — sealed vessels whose hidden interior spaces were meant to activate the imagination. Next month, Takaezu’s life and work will be the focus of a major retrospective at the Noguchi Museum in Long Island City, Queens. “Toshiko Takaezu: Worlds Within” will present over 150 pieces from private and public collections around the country, co-curated by the art historian Glenn Adamson, the museum curator Kate Wiener and the composer and sound artist Leilehua Lanzilotti. (A 368-page monograph, published in collaboration with Yale University Press, will accompany the exhibition.) Visitors will be able to see a collection that spans seven decades of Takaezu’s career, from her early student work in Hawaii in the 1940s to immersive, monumental ceramic forms she produced in the late 1990s to early 2000s. “Takaezu was also a weaver and painter, and often constructed multimedia installations where her ceramics, textiles and paintings operated together,” says Wiener. To play off this idea, the curators organized the show chronologically, incorporating each of these media into various sections, inspired by Takaezu’s own installations. Sound will also play a role. In her ceramic pieces, Takaezu would often place a dried fragment of clay within her closed form vessels, creating a musical rattle. For this exhibit, Lanzilotti (a finalist for the 2022 Pulitzer Prize in music) has developed a series of videos offering insight into the sonic elements of Takaezu’s work — and visitors can hear those rattles firsthand via an interactive display. .