Feeling at home: beyond luxury and splendour

Chip Lambert

Design books and vice versa. Contributor for IBS.it chez PIANOPRIMO

This week I've read:

Feeling Home
Nathalie & Virginie Droulers

Electa, 2017 / 200 pp. / Hardcover
EAN: 9788891816559

Often, interior architecture publications illustrate dream apartments and homes that produce the desired effect — to inspire — barely for a second. Awe soon makes way for bitter envy and a tinge of frustration creeps into the readers of these publications.

You might run this risk if you're publishing splendid centre-fold photographs of a 600 sqm mansion with a view of Central Park. Or showing the pictures of an equally huge chalet with a private swimming pool, looking out to the mountains above Cortina — with a timber-clad interior and a sweet scent that comes across even on the page.

Droulers Architecture, New York (DR01)

However...

However, the book edited by the Droulers sisters, published in 2017 in a revised extended edition for Electa Architettura, doesn't (just) create envy, it doesn't generate distance between the readers and the book. How? The secret is a simple one, and the same secret informs Nathalie and Virginie's style: it lies in details that capture your gaze.

Nathalie and Virginie Droulers' art meets a precise requirement: to turn details into universal ideas rather than figuring as single components. Outside the context, details become that rewarding source of inspiration every home design enthusiast is always looking for.

Of course, it's impossible to forget that we don't live in 500 sqm in Holland Park, but in that London mansion too there's something minimal, intimate and familiar that makes us think that these images aren't just simply there to show us luxury and splendour, but are a healthy source of inspiration too.

Droulers Architecture, Londra (DR04)

Useful things have to be perfect for use, the unnecessary has to be absolutely extraordinary.

Plato

The quote at the beginning of the book is a notice for readers: illustrating Virginie and Nathalie Droulers' work opens the doors to extraordinary homes. But, even though you can glimpse similar traits and constants in their work — a sort of Droulers’ signature style — these homes are attractive first and foremost because they convey the client's personality, his dreams and inclinations. And they do so by creating unique settings and paying great attention to detail.

There is no doubt that the studio Droulers draws from the Italian craftsmanship tradition. A team made up of only six people and a small network of suppliers assures them (Droulers) total control and can guarantee extraordinary quality.

Fragments of Villa d'Este, the extraordinary hotel on lake Como which for two generations was owned by the Droulers and shaped Nathalie and Virginie's aesthetic taste, come through in these homes: the difference that exists between a place just made for living and sleeping, and a place that can make you dream.