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      Kelly Wearstler adds pattern-filled bar to Austin Proper Hotel

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      American designer Kelly Wearstler has created an intimate cocktail lounge within a hotel she designed in Austin, Texas, which is intended to evoke “a balance between old-world opulence and modern elegance”.

      The Quill Room forms an extension to the existing dining and drinking options at the Austin Proper Hotel and Residences, which Wearstler completed the interiors for in 2019.
      The Quill Room offers hotel guests and residents an additional lounge and bar spaceThe lounge is tucked away on the second floor of the Handel Architects-designed building in Downtown Austin, and offers a French-inspired menu and live music programming for the hotel’s guests and residents.
      Wearstler’s interiors for the bar are awash with pattern, mixing gold, brown and black to create a space that appears warm, rich and elevated.
      A variety of vintage and contemporary chairs populate the spaceMany of the design elements blend nostalgia and contemporary twists, like tufted leather armchairs positioned beside funky sculptural lamps.

      “The design of The Quill Room is a balance between old-world opulence and modern elegance,” she told Dezeen. “The salon-style bar pairs the aesthetics to transport guests to another time within Downtown Austin, while still reflecting the city’s creative and music scenes.”
      Golden patterned wallpaper covers the wallsGolden patterned wallpaper covers the majority of the walls and continues across the ceiling, helping to make the room feel more intimate.
      “A highlight would have to be the gold wall covering,” said Wearstler. “It’s actually an adaptation of a piece from my own archive, originally created during the UK’s 1920s Arts & Crafts movement.”
      Within niches, folded screens feature a checkerboard of gold mirrorSmall tables and mismatched seats are positioned in recesses, against folding panels with a checkerboard of gold mirrors and floral motifs within wooden frames.
      Wearstler’ also included low leather and upholstered seats, as well as taller dining chairs along the sheer-curtained windows.
      Furniture pieces were sourced from Europe and a famous Texas antiques marketMost of the furniture pieces are vintage, or were crafted specifically for this project, including the rugs, lighting and additional decorative items.
      “The Quill Room features a lot of inspired furnishings that represent design through the decades – mainly from the 1960s to 1990s – which we’ve sourced from Europe and as nearby as the famed Round Top Antiques Market,” Wearstler said.

      Kelly Wearstler creates sculptural oak staircase for hotel in Austin

      The bar itself runs straight along the back wall, fronting an open cabinet filled with liquor bottles that is topped with red neon tubes. “It’s a detail crafted by an Austin artist, bringing the modern and the local to the forefront amongst the vintage-inspired,” said Wearstler.
      Another feature element is the illuminated, self-playing Edelweiss piano that was custom designed to offer “a uniquely Texan experience” for guests. There’s also a small, shaded outdoor terrace for enjoying drinks and bites in the warm Austin weather.
      An illuminated, self-playing Edelweiss piano was custom designed to entertain guestsThe new space joins the hotel’s Mediterranean-influenced restaurant The Peacock, private ground-floor cocktail bar Goldie’s, and Mexican-inspired rooftop restaurant and bar La Piscina.
      “I see The Quill Room as a complement to The Austin Proper’s existing restaurants and bars,” Wearstler said. “Like the rest of the property, it embodies modern elegance and refined luxury that heightens guests’ experience of the city while offering an immersive escape.”
      The Quill Room serves cocktails and French-inspired light bitesWearstler has completed multiple locations for the Proper hotel group, including several outposts in her home state of California, such as San Francisco and Santa Monica – which was named AHEAD Americas Hotel of the Year in 2020.
      Her most recent project for the franchise, in Downtown LA, opened last year and features a suite with its own indoor swimming pool.
      The photography is by The Ingalls.

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      KKDW Studios creates offices for Yoga With Adriene founder in Austin

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      Austin-based KKDW Studios has designed the headquarters for a yoga subscription app called Find What Feels Good, including a space for filming instructional videos.

      KKDW Studios founder Kelly DeWitt collaborated with yoga teacher Adriene Mishler – who became well-known through her Yoga With Adriene instructional videos – to create a base for Find What Feels Good, the platform she co-founded that offers video tutorials for at-home workouts.
      KKDW Studios used a modular system to build offices within the space for Find What Feels GoodLocated in East Austin, the 5,000-square-foot (465-square-metre) space was previously an empty shell with blue walls and a high-gloss, yellow-tinged concrete floor.
      DeWitt’s team described an intention to create “a space to evolve in and experiment with, a place to be inspired and inspired others.”
      Communal workstations are positioned in front of private offices”The space should feel welcoming with a warm, homey ambiance that makes you want to take a deep exhale,” the team added.

      To add this warmth, the majority of the interventions were made with wood, which forms wall panelling, louvred partitions, frames for glass walls, and furniture. The concrete floors were refinished in matte grey.
      A bright kitchen includes an island mounted on castors, which can be moved when neededDesigned for a quickly growing team and to be multi-functional, all the elements of the interiors are either bolted together or mounted on wheels, so they can be easily moved if needed.
      The linear space is divided up along its fenestrated facade. At one end is a cosy lounge area for receiving visitors or communal work, while a bright, fully equipped kitchen is located at the other.
      Warm-toned materials were chosen for the spaceIn between, the modular timber-framed glazed walls form a row of private offices, while an open workspace with large tables is positioned in front.
      Facing the windows is an uninterrupted wall that stretches 80 feet (24 metres), which is used by Mishler and her team as a backdrop for filming yoga videos for their app and Youtube channel.

      Ten homes designed for practising yoga and meditation

      Air ducts and other visual obstacles had to be moved to ensure that the shot is unobstructed, while the vertical slat in the lounge partition pivot to ensure the lighting is just right.
      “Natural light can be inspiring, but when filming, sometimes what they need is control – this allows them the best of both worlds,” said KKDW Studios.
      Slats in a partition can be adjusted to control light levels when filming in the spaceCushions for sofas and armchairs are wrapped in tufted, textured beige fabric in a variety of tones that are echoed in the rugs.
      From the exposed, angled ceiling hang a series of spherical pendant lamps, as well as power outlets on retractable cords for use at the workstations.
      An uninterrupted wall provides a backdrop for Adriene Mishler’s instructional yoga videos”All furniture is completely custom, designed after getting to know Adriene and her team, their needs, workflow, etc,” said KKDW Studios, which also acted as general contractor for the project.
      Yoga – a group of physical, mental, and spiritual practices – continues to grow in popularity around the world, and demand for at-home workouts like those facilitated by Find What Feels Good skyrocketed during the Covid-19 pandemic.
      Here are 10 homes with dedicated spaces for practising yoga and meditation.
      The photography is by Andrea Calo.

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      Melanie Raines designs “weird and funky” interiors for Austin residence

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      Interior designer Melanie Raines has applied her experience in hospitality design to ensure the large spaces of this Austin family home feel cosy, playful and “a bit irreverent”.

      Raines, who recently moved to the Texas capital from LA, was discovered by the clients after they visited the Soho Little Beach House in Malibu and researched the team behind its interiors.
      The home’s large living room features vertical elements including a concrete-block fireplace and a swingAfter connecting on LinkedIn and realising they are now based in the same city, the family asked her to design the interiors of a property they were building.
      The house, designed by local firm Ryan Street Architects, was originally conceived as a 12,500-square-foot (1,160-square-metre) California barn-inspired home with vast living spaces, six bedrooms and a guest house.
      Furniture is arranged to create zones, like a seating area framed by a brown leather sofaHowever, the music-loving homeowners decided that the interiors should better reflect their creative personalities, and provide a “weird and funky” environment for their four children and two dogs.

      “By the time we were brought onto the project, they were hoping to see more of themselves in the interior design: colorful, playful, and artful people who love music and don’t take things too seriously,” Raines told Dezeen.
      Above the bar, a section of mezzanine floor is replaced with a rope net”For this reason, the central design challenge was to marry the architecture of exposed steel and reclaimed wood with an interior that felt fresh, playful, and distinctive.”
      One of the biggest challenges was to make the huge open living room feel intimate and cosy.
      Walnut is used throughout the home and prominently in the kitchenThis was achieved by arranging furniture in different zones, a trick borrowed from Raines’ career in the boutique hospitality sector.
      A large wooden ping-pong table that doubles as a dining surface sits at the centre, accompanied by velvet-upholstered stools.
      The millwork echoes the exterior reclaimed timber cladding visible through large windowsOn the other side, a curve chocolate-brown leather sofa sits atop textured red rugs to create a nook in front of a bar area, which has a built-in pizza oven.
      Above the bar, a cut-out in the floor of a mezzanine balcony is replaced with a rope net to form a hammock.
      The primary bedroom is decorated in dark colours to create a relaxing atmosphereOther vertical elements help to draw the eye up, including the fireplace clad in split-face, industrial concrete blocks and a swing suspended on ropes from the 22-foot (6.7-metre) ceiling.
      To unite the various ground-floor spaces, walnut is repeated across several surfaces and details.
      Colour is used boldly in several of the smaller rooms”Occasionally we joked that it’s the ‘house that walnut built’ – the floors, millwork, and many of the furnishings are a beautiful American black walnut,” Raines said.
      This is especially true in the kitchen, where millwork on the island and built-in cabinetry are all crafted from the material – echoing the reclaimed timber ceilings and the exterior cladding visible through giant windows.
      A green sofa set the retro tone in the dark movie roomWhile colour is used sparingly as accents in the living area, a much bolder approach was taken in other rooms.
      “The clients came to develop a trust in some colour sensibilities that became the moods around the home,” explained Raines. “We landed on a creamy off-white in the main spaces, then got especially playful in the ancillary spaces.”

      Clayton Korte clads Hartford Residence in Austin with limestone and fibre cement

      Dark blues were chosen to create a relaxing atmosphere in the primary bedroom, where a corner is designated for the couple to enjoy tea together, while a retro aesthetic was guided by a green sofa in the near-black movie room.
      Smaller spaces like closets and bathrooms are decorated with a variety of patterned wallpapers, some of which Raines described as “PG-13”.
      Wallpaper chosen for closets and powder rooms includes a design that Raines described as “PG-13″In the guest house, wood panelling paired with tan and orange leathers offers a “1970s lakehouse feel”, and the primary powder bath has a black terrazzo stone ceiling.
      “The atmosphere needed to be creative, inspirational, artful, and un-precious,” said Raines. “Anything ‘fancy’ was immediately thrown out!”
      “It was a reaction on both my part and theirs to the age of over-design, and we were really able to throw some wild ideas out to see what stuck, then remix them to create an intentional – but a bit irreverent – final design,” she added.
      The ombre wallpaper in this powder room is another example of the designer’s playful approachAustin is one of the fastest-growing cities in the US and has seen a spike in residential architecture and interior projects as a result.
      Others that have been completed recently include a gabled family home clad in limestone and fibre cement by Clayton Korte and a residence with dark grey walls and a crisp silhouette by Side Angle Side.
      The photography is by Chase Daniel.

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      Hotel Magdalena is a homage to Texan lake houses

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      Bunkhouse Group and architecture office Lake Flato collaborated to create Hotel Magdalena, a hotel in Austin designed to emulate a Texas lake house filled with art and “hippie textiles.”Hotel Magdalena’s sloping architecture is designed to recall the gently inclined landscape of the nearby Barton Springs, a popular outdoor swimming spot.
      The four new buildings that make up the hotel occupy the original site of the 1950s Terrace Motor Hotel and Willie Nelson’s 1970s music venue Austin Opry House.

      A Harvey Probber sofa sits in the valet lobby

      Bunkhouse Group and Lake Flato incorporated elements from both mid-century Austin icons in the interiors.
      Guests are welcomed at two lobbies. The valet lobby is filled with pieces such as a Marset Dipping Lamp and a plush 1970s Harvey Probber sofa named Deep Tuft, designed to mimic the tufted seating found in luxury cars.
      Hotel Magdalena’s main lobby mixes design elements by renowned brands and local makers.

      A green Moroso sofa adds colour to the eclectic main lobby
      A Moroso sofa and coffee tables are placed alongside a custom oval wooden retail table crafted by Quarter Lab, an Austin-based woodworker.
      Unstained white oak tambour forms the main lobby’s desk, behind which colourful ceramic pots by local designer Rory Foster are placed, as well as the hotel’s own book collection sourced from Half Price Books.

      Quarter Lab designed the main lobby’s retail table
      “When we were styling the lobby, we pictured a person who lived in an effortlessly cool house on Lake Austin,” said Bunkhouse Group’s vice president of design and development Tenaya Hills.
      “We thought about what they would collect on their travels, what they found interesting, and what books and records they’d have,” Hills told Dezeen.

      Unstained white oak tambour is used in both lobbies
      A scattering of 70s original collages by the late Graham Harmon also decorates one of the lobby’s white walls. It is understood that Harmon painted the works in Austin.
      “The story of the hotel is the story of Austin,” said Hills. “The buildings are inspired by 1950s Austin lake houses, which then informed the materials you see and the furniture system we designed for the guest rooms.”

      1970s collages by Graham Harmon
      Influenced by designers such as Le Corbusier and Alvar Aalto, the hotel’s 89 rooms have smart systems of combination furniture.
      Bespoke beds are built-in and crafted from walnut wood, and inlay desks separate each room’s bed from its small living space.

      The guest rooms take cues from Le Corbusier and Alvar Aalto
      Poured concrete floors with exposed aggregate echo rocky river beds, while wooden ceilings maintain the hotel’s lake house design.
      Bathrooms tiled in blue, red, yellow or green inform the colour of each room’s more subtle design elements, such as various Christian Rathbone throw pillows adorned in what Hills describes as “hippie textiles,” and custom bedside lighting by David Weeks.

      Different coloured bathrooms inform the design of each bedroom
      Guest rooms feature individual black and white photographs by local photographer Scott Newton. Newton’s images capture live music in Austin.
      Hotel Magdalena’s swimming pool is accessed by various exposed elevated walkways. Poolside umbrellas, loungers and side tables by Kettal blend with the exterior setting.

      The hotel’s swimming pool is one of its central hubs
      Overlooking the pool, the hotel’s outdoor bar area is a colourful space with soft seating by Expormim and clusters of umbrellas.
      Clad in terracotta tiles, the bar itself has a playful terrazzo top designed by Concrete Collaborative.

      Visitors can lounge on soft seating by Expormim at the bar
      Hotel Magdalena also has a restaurant. Summer House on Music Lane is a bright and airy space furnished with two-tone green Mathilda dining and bar chairs designed by Patrica Urquiola for Moroso.
      “We went for a palette of natural materials – stone and wood and a high gloss ceramic tile. The main colour woven throughout is green,” said Hills.

      Summer House on Music Lane is designed in the style of the main hotel
      Like in the hotel’s eclectic lobbies, vintage treasures made from coloured glass and ceramics line the restaurant’s bar shelves.

      Mark Odom pays homage to the 1950s with Inglewood Residence in Austin

      Local craftsmanship is celebrated in the form of a bespoke bench by Litmus Industries and artwork by Graham Harmon and Michelle Billette sourced at Round Top Antiques Fair.

      The restaurant’s bar is clad in green tiles
      Bunkhouse Group is a hospitality company based in Austin. Lake Flato is an American architecture firm founded in 1984. The firm recently designed a marine research centre in Mississippi formed from six pine buildings.
      Other eclectic interior spaces in Austin include a hotel by Kelly Wearstler with a sculptural oak staircase, and a restaurant filled with hanging plants and used books created by Mickie Spencer.
      Photography is by Nick Simonite.

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      Kelly Wearstler creates sculptural oak staircase for hotel in Austin

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      Interior designer Kelly Wearstler included eye-catching details such as vintage rugs and a white oak staircase that doubles as a ceramics display in her design for the Austin Proper Hotel and Residences.Built in 2019 by New York firm Handel Architects, the 32-storey hotel and apartments managed by McGuire Moorman Hospitality is located in Downtown Austin, Texas.
      Los Angeles-based Wearstler, who will be on the interiors panel as a Dezeen Awards 2021 judge, created the aesthetic for the 244 rooms and 99 “branded residences.”

      Panels of Shou Sugi Ban cypress clad the walls

      Her interior design for the hotel revolves around local art and textiles, with some eclectic vintage elements thrown in.
      A focal point is a sculptural staircase made of white oak wood with stepped balustrades.

      Vintage rugs are draped over the wooden stairs
      An interesting backdrop has been created by showcasing the underside of the staircase steps, while a ziggurat of plinths below is used to display a range of glazed earthenware pots and vases.
      Custom panelling along the walls of the hotel is made from cypress wood, charred using the traditional Japanese technique of Shou Sugi Ban to create a tiger-striped effect.

      Patterned tiles and rugs feature in the Peacock restaurant
      Mismatched vintage rugs run up the stairs, and a mix of chairs and armchairs upholstered in patterned fabric are scattered around the lobby.
      Tiles by Austin ceramicist Rick Van Dyke appear as inlays on furniture such as cabinets, and fibre artwork by local artist Magda Sayeg, known for her yarn bombing installations, are hung in the bedrooms alongside antique mirrors.

      Wine racks and botanical wallpaper decorate the restaurant
      The fifth floor features a pool deck clad with locally quarried travertine, where Mexican restaurant La Piscina serves small-batch tequila.
      There are three other eateries in Austin Proper Hotel and Residences including Peacock, which serves Mediterranean food against a backdrop of parquet floors covered in more vintage rugs and walls covered in Portuguese-style tiles.
      A private dining area, screened off by walls made of full wine racks, features botanical wallpaper.

      Pastel tiles decorate the Mockingbird cafe
      The interior of The Mockingbird, a coffee shop that serves Greek frozen yoghurt, was decked out in more colourful tiles by Wreastler.
      Small square tiles cover the walls and form a pattern of powder blue, seafoam green, inky navy blue and pale burnt orange colours.

      The bar has a flocked wallpaper ceiling
      Austin Proper Hotel and Residences also has a drinking establishment called Goldie’s Sunken Bar, which has a cobalt blue-painted bar, low stuffed armchairs and a high ceiling covered in opulent wallpaper.
      All over the hotel, walls are hug with art and niches are filled with ceramics. Pot plants filled with hardy desert species add splashes of greenery.

      Pot plants and mismatched furniture
      The 99 apartments attached to the hotel also have interiors designed by Kelly Wearstler. Their occupants have access to the hotel’s amenities as well as a private pool, along with dog grooming and concierge services.
      Kelly Wearstler is an interior designer based on America’s west coast. Recent collaborations for the same hotel franchise include the San Francisco Proper and the Santa Monica Proper.
      Photography is by The Ingalls.

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      Eclectic decor fills Eberly restaurant and tavern in central Austin

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      Hanging plants, used books and a bar salvaged from New York are among the diverse elements incorporated into an eatery and bar in Texas conceived by architecture studio Clayton & Little and interior designer Mickie Spencer. The Eberly occupies a 1970s brick building that formerly housed a print shop. The restaurant – which serves up […] More