House by the Sea

Williams Bunny Williams

Description

“America’s reigning queen of decorating.” —Southern Living“One of America’s premier interior designers.” —Garden Design   Author and renowned designer Bunny Williams has been at the top of the interior design world for more than 40 years. Here she invites readers to explore La Colina, her lovely Caribbean retreat tucked into lush, tropical gardens by the sea.   Williams writes “We knew we wanted a house where we would really live outside, a house where the ocean breezes would blow through, and a house that would be a place in which we could gather our friends and family and entertain easily.”   The book explores every facet of the beautiful property located in the Punta Cana in the Dominican Republic—from outdoor rooms and garden plantings and design to the delightful, island-living luxury of the villa’s interiors, furnishings, and collections. Woven into each chapter are essays written by friends who have visited the property: Gil Schafer details the villa’s architecturePage Dickey tours the gardensRoxana Robinson offers a peek at a weekend stayAngus Wilkie discusses the delights of collectingJane Garmey revels in the pleasures of cooking, food, and friends Let trailblazer and tastemaker Bunny Williams, a member of the Interior Design Hall of Fame, take you on a personal tour of this special home. In her introduction, she writes that her aim was to have this book “feel like a visit to our island retreat.” You’ll see in this lavish coffee table book filled with photographs, story, and advice that she succeeded.

Sujets

• Interior design

Informations

• Publié par: ABRAMS BOOKS
• Date de parution: 13 septembre 2016
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781613129586
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 15 Mo

Extrait

A
CONTENTS

How It Happened , Bunny Williams
I
PLANNING AND BUILDING
Architecture , Gil Schafer III
II
DESIGNING AND DECORATING
Collections , Angus Wilkie
III
ENTERTAINING
Eating at La Colina , Jane Garmey
IV
CREATING THE GARDENS
A Stroll in the Gardens , Page Dickey
V
THE SOUL OF THE HOUSE
Friends , Roxana Robinson
Reflections , Christian Brechneff
A
HOW IT HAPPENED

O ur wonderful friend, the late, great fashion designer Oscar de la Renta, introduced my husband, John Rosselli, and me to the Dominican Republic. Oscar loved his homeland, and we came to love it, too, not only for its beauty, but also for the fabulous, kind Dominican people. After many visits to the country, we decided to build a house in Punta Cana, and we called it La Colina.
Several years later, after we had finished the house, our great friend Gil Schafer III came for a visit, bringing with him a book he had produced of the photographs he had taken over various visits. It was this book of pictures that inspired me to write about our house by the sea.
We invited Francesco Lagnese-the brilliant interior, society, and portrait photographer-to come and stay at La Colina and use his amazing eye and talent to try to capture the soul of the house and its gardens.
My aim was to have the resulting book feel like a visit to our island retreat, and brilliant book designer Doug Turshen and his talented wife, Rochelle Udell, made that possible. Editor Shawna Mullen pored over every word I wrote to accompany the photos, helping to make sense of my story. I cannot thank them all enough. Without their vision, this book would not have come to be.
Likewise, I cannot sufficiently thank our gifted friends who graciously agreed to write about their experiences at La Colina: gardener extraordinaire Page Dickey, author Jane Garmey, novelist and biographer Roxana Robinson, architect Gil Schafer III, antiques dealer Angus Wilkie, and painter Christian Brechneff.
John and I have been blessed to have so many friends and family members enjoy our Punta Cana house over the years. Now we invite you to be our guest-and stay for as long as you d like!
- Bunny Williams
I

PLANNING AND BUILDING
We knew we wanted a house where we would really live outside, a house where the ocean breezes would blow through, and a house that would be a place in which we could gather our friends and family and entertain easily.
A
PLANNING AND DESIGNING

W hen it came to planning our island retreat, John and I both knew we wanted a traditional, classic house. We also knew we wanted a house where we would really live outside, a house the ocean breezes would blow through, a house that would be a place in which we could gather our friends and family and entertain easily. Fashion designer Oscar de la Renta introduced us to Cuban architect Ernesto Buch, a most modestly understated and gentle man with perhaps the best eye for classical detail I have ever met. Ernesto worked for the great architect Allan Greenberg (who told me much later that he had never encountered anyone with a better eye for proportion and scale). John and I returned to New York giddy with excitement and went through every book we had on southern houses of the Mississippi Delta, a style of architecture we both adored.
Several months later, we met with Ernesto again in Punta Cana, arriving laden with pictures of our favorite houses and a description of what we dreamed of and how we wanted to live. We all walked the property, which I came to learn was a big hill of solid coral ( la colina translates to the hill ), and Ernesto immediately saw where the house should be placed. We went off to dinner and talked and talked about houses we loved, the three of us in complete agreement. The next day Ernesto appeared with a sketch of what he thought could be the basic plan of the house and his vision for the exterior. With some minor changes and a reduction of size, it was exactly what we had imagined. We spent that day refining the plan.
John s greatest desire was to have a large high-ceilinged living room (he loves big furniture), so Ernesto sketched this in. He designed for it a beautiful tray (recessed) ceiling with a perfectly proportioned cornice. I added triple-hung windows-I had always loved the ones designed by Thomas Jefferson for Monticello-as these keep air moving through the house while avoiding the banging of French doors in a breeze, something I really dislike. (Triple-hung windows are ideal for high-ceilinged rooms: You can open them all the way and walk under them easily, or just open the top sash for circulation if it is a windy day.)
The planning phase was thrilling for me; I had done such planning often with many of my clients, but never just for John and me.
Ernesto went away and put all our ideas and dreams into actual plans for building the house. He returned several days later with a sketch of the almost-perfect house-which, with a few changes, became the final plan.
BUILDING

B uilding a house in the Dominican Republic is a truly unique experience, and one I came to love (despite many moments of chaos). There is a world of difference between the climate of New England (where we live) and that of Punta Cana. And when it comes to construction, there is also a world of difference between the methods, available building materials, and labor customs of the two countries. All these things we had to learn as we went along.
The first bit of confusion arose when we requested a cost estimate to compare to our budget for building the house. Junior Pe a, our contractor (and Oscar de la Renta s domino partner and friend), had never been asked for such an estimate before, and I immediately knew that his first calculation was far too low. Junior went off to refigure the costs, and when a more accurate budget was agreed upon, work began.
I went to Punta Cana every six weeks over the year and a half it took to build the house, growing more excited each time-and learning more about how construction on an island is done. First, I saw no toolboxes; everything was done by hand. Even cement was mixed manually on flattened cardboard boxes-I never once saw a mechanical cement mixer. One day I came in on a noon flight and arrived to find the site empty. Absolutely no one was around. When I finally opened the door to a guest room, I discovered all the workers taking a nap on the cool stone floor to escape the midday heat. On another trip, I noticed that a window had been installed in the wrong place. A comedy of errors ensued as I tried to explain the situation to the foreman, who looked at me in seemingly complete puzzlement. We searched high and low for the building plans, which didn t seem to be in use or anywhere in evidence. We finally found them wadded up in a garbage bag in the proposed laundry room-all of Ernesto s beautiful architectural drawings! (In fact, had it not been for Ernesto and his associate Javier, I have no idea what would have been built.)
When building a house, one has to consider carefully what each room will be used for and then make sure it is the correct size for its intended purpose. When we initially received the plans for the house, the first thing I did was draw up furniture plans for each room. I wanted king-size beds in the larger bedrooms and needed to make sure that each had a long enough bed wall with sufficient space for both the bed and ample bedside tables. For the smaller bedrooms in the pool house, queen beds and smaller bedside tables were in order. In every bedroom, I wanted the bed to face the view out the windows. I hate seeing beds in front of windows; I like to wake up and be able to look outdoors.
In the tropics, room planning extends to the exterior of the house, too. Porches are used as outdoor rooms, so I had to make sure all the porches we were going to build were big enough for outdoor living. The loggia off the living room had to accommodate sofas and chairs as well as big chaises facing the view for reading. The west porch would have to be big enough for a large dining table and be able to double as a dining room and entertaining space, too.
We considered the tropical climate constantly. Everything in the house had to accommodate both heat and high humidity. In addition to refrigerators, we made space off the kitchen for a cold room -an air-conditioned food pantry that would keep dry goods and vegetables fresh. To prevent mildew, our large linen/storage closet needed year-round air-conditioning, too. For holidays and entertaining, we wanted to make sure we had a large enough laundry room to handle sufficient towels, sheets, and linens (as well as summer clothing) for a houseful of guests. The laundry also had to have large storage closets for lightbulbs, candles, paper and cleaning products, and other such bulk purchases. I confess, I love having a well-appointed laundry room. I almost would rather have a large laundry-where I can also cut and arrange flowers for the house-than a big dining room. It is amazing how much time I spend in it.
When building a house, one has to consider carefully what each room will be used for and then make sure it is the correct size for its intended purpose.
A lot of our planning centered on the materials we would use for the building itself. The walls were to be traditionally constructed using concrete block with stucco exteriors and plaster on the interior. The roof was to be made of Spanish terra-cotta tiles.
We wanted to use local materials throughout the interior. We specified the Caribbean coral stone Coralina (the most beautiful fossil stone ever) for all the terraces and floors (except for two guest bedrooms), showers, walkways, and the walls connecting the inside to the gardens. For bathroom floors, I went to a factory in Santo Domingo that did wonderful copies of the colorfully painted concrete tiles used on the floor of Dominican houses in the nineteenth century. The factory