Landscape architect Thomas Woltz has a passion for the clarity and proportion of Italian Renaissance architecture. That Woltz lives in a gabled Queen Anne Victorian comes as an ironic surprise, even to him. Palladio did not use spindles and gingerbread, he notes, dryly. But his home, together with the garden he has established there over the past two decades, is a unified study in pleasing contrasts. The impact is at once disciplined and spontaneous, respectful and irreverent. Much like the man himself.
Woltz bought the house, in a small Virginia town in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, in 1999. His restoration honors what he calls the historic intent of the structure. I decided to respect the Victorian volumes, he notes. I was not going to remove walls to create an open plan. For two years, the place was a construction site as it received a copper roof, a mansard porch roof, and plumbing and electrical-all new.
In the hands of a less erudite and playful designer, such attentiveness to history might produce a rigid monotony of style. But Woltz loves to devise temporal dialogues not only between past and present but also among different pasts. As a young man, he spent five years practicing architecture and teaching in Venice. He lived near the Palazzo Fortuny, which he often visited. “I was immersed in a world of the Islamic influence of southern Spain, Italian textiles, furniture, and Venetian Gothic architecture, says Woltz, who began collecting antique Fortuny fabrics and light fixtures.
هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة Summer 2022 من Elle Decor US.
ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 9,000 مجلة وصحيفة.
بالفعل مشترك ? تسجيل الدخول
هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة Summer 2022 من Elle Decor US.
ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 9,000 مجلة وصحيفة.
بالفعل مشترك? تسجيل الدخول
BIOGRAPHY OF A ROOM
BE IT VIA GOSSIP GIRL, SEX AND THE CITY, OR REAR WINDOW, we all have our fantasy versions of New York City.
SNOW in Every WINDOW
IN MONTANA'S EXCLUSIVE YELLOWSTONE CLUB, COMMUNE DELIVERS A WEST COAST GROOVE TO A HOME WITH PRISTINE VIEWS OF BIG SKY COUNTRY.
VIENNA WAITS FOR YOU
DESIGNER BEN PENTREATH RECOUNTS HOW HE BROUGHT A VIBRANT ENGLISH SENSIBILITY TO A QUINTESSENTIAL AUSTRIAN TOWNHOUSE.
IT'S HUMAN NATURE
SHEILA BRIDGES DRAWS FROM VERMONT'S HISTORY AND WILDERNESS TO BRING LIFE AND CHARACTER TO A SPRAWLING NEW HOME.
MIAMI? MINIMAL.
DESIGNER MARTIN BRÛLÉ MAKES FABULOUS UNFUSSY IN A SOUTH FLORIDA PIED-À-TERRE.
ALESSIA in WONDERLAND
IN THE ITALIAN SKI RESORT OF CORTINA D'AMPEZZO, A MILANESE HOMEOWNER TAPS HER ARCHITECT SISTER TO BUILD AN ALPINE CHALET WITH FANTASTICAL FLAIR.
DOES ANYBODY REMEMBER DRAMA?
Cinemas were once dazzling architectural statements. Now, after decades of the pictures literally getting smaller, there's a renewed appetite for Golden Age glamour.
The Life of Bath
The ancients invented them, the Enlightened brought them home, and the Victorians gave them feet. Tubs continue to evolve but are as much a luxury today as they've ever been.
IT'S SO VERY YOU
So what if it's a rental? Swap out the curtains, put up new wallpaper, go crazy. It's your home after all, so own it - even if you really don't.
CIAO, MADISON
A new 12-story building offers a blueprint for how to live like Armani.