It’s hard to define true luxury. But Cabo Verde’s Barefoot Luxury may have found the answer in their new architectural project. Cradled by the rocky mountains in the Baia de João d’Evora, this one-of-a-kind hospitality design, spearheaded by Serge Hannecart and Jan Talboom, includes 30 villas and a hotel, all built with respect to the local culture, people, and environment.
Read MoreWhen traveling, the most memorable experiences come from fully immersing yourself in the culture and daily life of your destination. Whether it’s through what you eat, what you see, or where you stay, the best trips are those that take visitors to places that speak to the heart of the city they’re exploring. Silent Living focuses on the latter experience, creating idyllic accommodations that have guests feeling at home the moment they arrive. Combining impeccable architecture with swoon-worthy landscapes, the company specializes in creating one-of-a-kind stays that celebrate the rich culture of the city the home resides in.
Read MoreBetween the hills of beautiful Calabria, Italy sits a mysterious, earthy-toned villa designed by MORQ Architecture. Villa RA frames the stunning vistas with its intriguing architecture featuring many windows and expansive openings. The minds behind this project are the architects of MORQ, founded by Matteo Monteduro, Emiliano Roja, and Andrea Quagliola. The firm is known for its projects internationally but at the same time offers a unique local approach being based in Italy and Australia.
Read MoreIn the heart of Store Kongensgade in inner Copenhagen, sits Tableau, a floral design studio home to innovative designs and creations all brought to life by Julius Værnes Iversen. A floral designer, his work centers around exotic installations both large and small. Showcasing flowers in a unique and new way, his pieces range from the exaggerated and dramatic to the simple and reserved.
Read MoreInspired by the chaos of nature, American photographer and explorer Cody Cobb tries to find and capture stillness in nature, resulting in stunning, moving landscape images. He is based in Seattle, Washington, and his work has won several awards already. Wandering the wilderness, Cody immerses himself completely in nature. This enables him to record calm and still moments in the natural rawness.
Read MoreOn a suburban street in Perth, Western Australia lies the mysterious Cloister House, a minimalist hideaway erected from concrete. The almost windowless gray walls enclose a lush, green central courtyard around which daily life unfolds.
Read MoreFor Milan-based Studio Wok, often the most rewarding projects are those that cultivate inspiration directly from the source—the landscape. To them, the magic lies in the details; the natural shapes and materials found around the area are often directly translated into the project’s design, creating a sense of continuity with the land and the building. What sparks is a compelling, multi-layered dialogue between spatial and material features and between history and modernity.
Read MoreIt’s Kristina Dam’s detailed expertise that makes her minimalistic designs so captivating. The Copenhagen-based designer’s ability to see the refined beauty in simple lines has launched her career in designing home furnishings and accessories expressive of Nordic minimalism. For Dam, the style captivated her for its natural ability to evoke a sense of calm and tranquility. In a tech-driven and work-focused society, Dam believes people lean toward minimalistic interiors for a place to recharge and unwind from our busy, day-to-day lives. With use of natural materials and a simplistic monochromatic palette, Dam and her design studio creates stylish pieces that will stand the test of time. We spoke with her on why she thinks minimalism is so popular and which projects excite her the most.
Read MoreThe London based design studio House of Grey has developed a particular aesthetic and approach where salutogenic design and cradle-to-cradle materials prevail, creating their very own “whole-person-whole-world” philosophy. The spaces and interiors designed by House of Grey are all based on their “symbiotic principle of using materials that benefit human health throughout their use and actively feed the earth upon disposal
Read MoreIn the heart of the diverse district of Kreuzberg in Berlin, on the ground floor of an 1880s apartment building that was once home to a supermarket, we find the serene office of life and work partners Mar Vicens and Ask Anker Aistrup.
The architects established their award-winning studio mar plus ask in 2015 after teaching and working independently for offices in Denmark, Spain, and France. The strength of the studio lies in the origin of the founders, combining Scandinavian and Mediterranean aesthetics in their works that are always humble, but full of character—much like their own home and office space in Berlin.
Read MoreBelgian photographer and interior designer Pieter Peulen has a natural curiosity and love for preloved objects. Combining this with inspirations such as modern sculptures and eclectic design, Pieter created a unique style and approach to interior design which is reflected in his own home. It were the Belgian designer’s parents who passed on their love for second hand objects to him when they took him to flea markets and auctions. Now, Pieter has been traveling all over Europe, going from market to market to look for unique and extraordinary objects. “It is so easy to go on the internet and order all the fancy and expensive stuff. It is much nicer to have the feeling of a catch. It is also much nicer if there is a story attached to an object or a scratch here or there,” Pieter says. He achieved a degree in interior and furniture design and became a photographer and social media expert as well.
Read MoreIf we could, we’d like to live in British artist Charlotte Taylor’s imaginative world for awhile. The London-based digital designer has developed a captivating style of pastel-hued worlds where the lines between fiction and reality are blurred to perfection. Through years of personal projects and commercial projects for big-name clients including Elle Netherlands and Print Club London, Taylor has forged her own path in pushing the boundaries of design and architecture to create works entirely unique. But to Taylor, she’s never done learning, and she’s always looking for ways to challenge herself and her approach to art. We caught up with Taylor to learn why she’s loving collaborative projects at the moment and what’s next for her career.
Read MoreBarcelona-based artist Carla Cascales Alimbau finds beauty in imperfection and transfers this into her beautiful and authentic sculptures, drawings and paintings. After studying advertising at first, she followed the more creative path she was destined for and studied graphic design and illustration, after which she could fully dedicate herself to her passion: arts. Her artworks carry a certain subtleness and minimalist aesthetic with some architectural inspirations. Using raw and natural materials and tones, Carla obtains an earthy and sometimes Mediterranean look in her pieces. In her constant search of the essence of forms and the balance of materials, she explores the imperfection and transience of beauty, celebrating imperfections. Carla already held solo exhibitions in Madrid, London and New York and showed several art installations in renowned institutions such as the Maradero Creation Center in Madrid. Today, she talks inspirations, beauty and authenticity.
Read MorePia Riverola is always on the go. The travel photographer spends most of her days flying from one destination to the next, talking with strangers on the street, and wandering down a new city looking for landscapes that catch her eye. It’s tiring, she says, but incredibly rewarding to immerse herself in a city’s identity—whether it’s through the locals, food, or landmarks. This translates directly in her photographs, where each image is rich with emotion and thought. For Riverola, she can pinpoint exactly how she was feeling or what she was thinking about with each photograph. The composition she selects, the colors she incorporates, the textures—they all are descriptive details that connect her to specific moments in time and reach out to the many followers of her work on Instagram and beyond. In between commercial projects with companies like NIKE and Google, along with her ever-evolving personal work, Riverola spoke with us about what it’s really like to be a travel photographer and how she decides what’s worth capturing.
Read MoreOn a hilltop in Zürich, surrounded by a park-like site, we find the House in a Park designed by Swiss studio Think Architecture. Merging with the landscape with its stone and plaster facades, it exudes a minimalistic, natural essence that blurs the lines between where architecture ends and nature begins.
Read MoreSome cling to the age-old adage—“Life is a journey, not a destination.” But perhaps those people have yet to see the international destinations that photographer Carley Rudd captures in her imagery. The Los Angeles-based freelance and self-taught photographer has been featured in Condé Nast Traveller, Travel + Leisure, Afar, and Suitcase Magazine, just to name a few, and is known for her clean aesthetic and evocative photography. For her, the joy and excitement is in the destination, whether it be the jungles of Chiang Mai or the sun-drenched plains of Moab.
Read MoreAna Popescu is a French visual artist and illustrator based in Vienna, Austria who’s work catches your eye and doesn’t let go. Using strong colors and contrast and what seem like simple shapes, her illustrations are visually popping and have a sense of mystery to them as well. Before her art studies of printmaking and drawing at the University of applied Arts in Vienna, Ana studied Philosophy, History of Art and Sociology at the Eberhard-Karls-Universität Tübingen in Germany. Now, her works explore different themes and perception of space, focusing on the relation between inside and outside as well, which translates trough simple forms and vibrant colors. By portraying every day and average objects in different settings and contrasts, she gives them an extra dimension, a second life. The vibrant colors, simple shapes, use of light and shadow and occasional dotted patterns remind of the Pop art and Bauhaus movements and modernist landscapes.
Read MoreThe project of Vista House came to life in the summer of 2018 when a private client called on Studio 10 to remodel his home in the suburb of Shenzhen. He wanted to “add some contemporary and whimsical taste to this single-family house,” the studio notes. The house stood out in the neighborhood, considering its original Italian style, reminiscent of the Tuscany countryside. Since there were some statuary restrictions for the exterior renovation, Studio 10 mainly focused on reshaping the interior while keeping and reinforcing its connection with the exterior.
Read MoreOver the past year, everything about how we work and live has changed. Travel plans and holidays have been canceled, kids are homeschooling, and people are now working from home. And to make the best out of an unexpected and challenging situation, most of us have started working to improve our spaces in an attempt to make our home offices as beautiful (and functional) as possible. Whether we share a workspace with family or friends or have the privacy of a home office, we all need a space to allow ourselves to think, create, and flourish in this new capacity. With this in mind, VISUAL PLEASURE has designed a new home gallery for the office in collaboration with a collective of amazing designers and brands.
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