Gilbert’s Hill made history when it installed a rope tow in 1934—and the landmark Vermont property comes with five buildings and over 100 acres of conserved land.
From the Agent: "Located two miles north of the Village of Woodstock, Gilbert’s Hill is one of Vermont’s most celebrated properties and a national landmark for its contribution to the sport of alpine skiing. The farm is recognized as the birthplace of lift-served skiing in America, where the first rope tow was installed in 1934. Today, its open pastures, rolling terrain, and historic ski hill remain wonderfully intact—a living landscape that forever changed the trajectory of winter sports and the development of recreational skiing in the United States. At the heart of the property is a circa 1855 Greek Revival brick farmhouse with four bedrooms, two bathrooms, and a classic mid-19th-century clapboard addition with kitchen and garage. Original details have been thoughtfully preserved, blending historic integrity with comfort and charm. Surrounding the main house are a collection of historic and restored buildings, including: a 1934 cottage guesthouse, carriage barn, dairy barn, and an original milk house with attic loft."
Many of the buildings were overhauled in a 2020 renovation that involved structural restoration, updating the utilities, and redoing the finishes.
With the living and dining area, it’s set down a couple steps from a "hallway" that connects with the yard via glass sliders.
Houses We Love: Every day we feature a remarkable space submitted by our community of architects, designers, builders, and homeowners. Have one to share? Post ithere.
From the Architect:"The design for this new home in Fremantle, Australia, makes the most of its patchwork setting, where the subdivided site is closely hemmed in by four neighbors and has a only a narrow frontage to the street. The resulting two-story home, designed for a young family, has a compact footprint and features an arrangement of horizontal and vertical spaces that ensure it transcends the site’s constraints, taking advantage of borrowed views to the north. From the outside, the selection of materials—corrugated iron, timber cladding, galvanized steel framing, and mesh fencing that will eventually be covered by greenery—captures the workaday nature of Fremantle and its port. Internally, the highly functional and flexible plan will evolve to meet the family’s changing needs over time, while the overlay of rich materiality internally ensures it works well as a comfortable and inviting family home."
AcresFrom the Agent: "1731 Notre Dame Drive is one of the few examples of International Style modernism in Albuquerque—a city dominated by Pueblo Revival architecture. Designed by Harvey Hoshour, this 1969 residence features two pavilions elevated on pilotis, connected by a dramatic glass foyer with mountain views. Open-plan living and dining spaces invite effortless entertaining or quiet reflection, while the primary suite offers a serene retreat with its own sitting area and walk-in closet. Properties of this architectural significance very rarely come on the market in New Mexico. A design duo’s 2024 restoration has brought it to peak condition, honoring Hoshour’s original vision."
Architect Harvey Hoshour designed the home as as a direct tribute to Le Corbusier’s Villa Savoye.
Architect Kazunori Sakai felt confident he could build a self-sustaining residence that merged traditional forms and passive design strategies.
Houses We Love: Every day we feature a remarkable space submitted by our community of architects, designers, builders, and homeowners. Have one to share? Post it here.
From the Architect:"When I began designing my own house in the center of Amami Island in Japan, I never imagined it would eventually be disconnected from the power grid. Yet, as environmental degradation accelerates and extreme weather becomes the norm, that choice became inevitable. The decision was catalyzed by a mountain I purchased three years earlier—a place where I began developing my own micr0infrastructure to live independently, preparing for unforeseen crises while envisioning new forms of resilience in aging, depopulated regions.
"Implementing full self-sufficiency deep in the mountains proved difficult. The main challenge was the island’s surprisingly low solar irradiation, comparable to northern Japan. After evaluating wind, hydro, and geothermal power, solar energy remained the most practical option. To test its feasibility, I chose my own urban residence as an experimental site. Ten days before the groundbreaking ceremony, I decided to sever the connection to the national grid. The result is an autonomous, self-circulating house that allows a family of four to live comfortably without external electricity or air-conditioning, even under Amami’s harsh subtropical conditions of high humidity and limited sunlight. Rooted in the island’s vernacular memory, the design reinterprets traditional spatial logics and crafts a contemporary way of coexisting with nature.
"Inspired by the region’s historical buntō layout, the house consists of five independent volumes—each serving a distinct function such as bath, bedroom, and storage—arranged geometrically to create in-between spaces that serve as shared living areas. These connect fluidly to verandas and gardens, blurring the boundaries between inside and outside, family and community, human and nature.
"The roof form reinterprets the local corrugated metal and irimoya profiles, integrating layers of insulation, ventilation, and light control to respond to Amami’s climate. Referencing the elevated takakura granaries, the structure allows wind to pass freely in all directions, while deep eaves moderate intense sunlight and sudden tropical downpours. A small wood-fired sauna uses fuel recycled from construction offcuts, creating a closed resource loop between builder and site. Food waste is composted and returned to the vegetable garden, where harvested produce re-enters the family’s daily meals—forming a living ecosystem of circular sustainability within the household.
"Amami is known as the Island of Ties, where communal rituals remain central to life. Family celebrations often gather over eighty relatives and neighbors, continuing late into the night. While such traditions have faded with urbanization and isolation, this house restores that cultural rhythm. The open, tolerant spaces naturally invite people to gather and share time together, blurring the distinction between private dwelling and communal place."
Architecture firm Snøhetta faces charges after emails reveal union busting efforts, Philadelphia’s iconic Rocky statue is being relocated, and more.
Builders including Lennar and Taylor Morrison are floating a massive rent-to-own program some are referring to as "Trump Homes," pitching the idea of creating up to one million entry-level houses funded by private investors. (Despite its name, the proposal has nothing to do with the White House.) Here’s how it would work. (Bloomberg)
Staff at Bjarke Ingels Group’s (BIG) London studio are protesting proposed layoffs that could cut nearly half the office after a major project was abruptly canceled. The employees, many of whom relocated internationally to the U.K. for the promise of a secure job and are supported by the trade union Unite, are not happy. (Dezeen)
At a recent cabinet meeting, President Trump said he wants to "drive housing prices up" to protect existing owners’ wealth, even as voters, especially younger ones, rank housing affordability as their top concern. Without a serious increase in housing supply, economists say his "demand-side" ideas risk worsening the housing crisis. (The New York Times)
The National Labor Relations Board has charged architecture firm Snøhetta with illegally firing eight New York employees after a failed union vote, citing revealing internal emails from a director at the firm that compared organizing efforts to a scene from A Clockwork Orange. (Hell Gate)
The Rocky statue is being moved to the top of the stairs at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
Photo by Wolfgang Schwan/Anadolu via Getty Image
Philadelphia’s Rocky statue has long stood at the base of the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, nestled into a shaded grove that’s accessible at street level. Now city officials are moving it to the top of the stairs, which would make for a more Instagrammable location for tourists. Here’s why locals aren’t so happy about it. (The Philadelphia Inquirer)
Providing a counterpoint to the soulless and monochromatic advocates of the period, the architect left an imprint on design with his fearless use of color and pattern.
Welcome to From the Archive, a look back at stories from Dwell’s past. This story previously appeared in the February 2008 issue.
Imported from Europe in the black-and-white pages of design journals, modernism was often criticized as soulless and monochromatic—two charges that could never be leveled against Alexander Girard. The multitalented architect and designer succinctly defined his colorful, cluttered, and bold approach as "aesthetic functionalism," with the belief that delighting the senses was just as important a function of design as any other more practical concern. There is perhaps no greater evidence of this than in Girard’s love of "unrefined and unsophisticated" crafts, which he spent a lifetime accumulating from diverse corners of the globe. These crafts informed Girard’s sensual mutation of the International Style, culminating in an output that is wholly unique and instantly recognizable.
Girard’s appointment as the head of Herman Miller’s burgeoning textile division in 1951 initiated one of the most exuberant periods in modern design’s history. At Herman Miller, Girard joined design director George Nelson and designer Charles Eames to form an unrivaled triumvirate of creative power. Under founder D.J. De Pree, the company allowed the trio free rein, and in turn, the Big Three, created designs imbued with such richness that their resonance is as powerful today as ever. However, while Nelson and Eames never left the public eye, Girard’s contributions—more decorative, more ephemeral, and less well documented—had until recently largely faded into obscurity.
"He was a designer who didn’t fit in any particular category," notes Matthew Rembe, who directs the Girard estate for máXimo. The genre-defying scope and gargantuan mass of Girard’s output is indeed impossible to pigeonhole, ranging from homes to restaurants, furniture to branding, textiles to wallpaper, exhibitions to handicrafts. All the more impressive is the attention to minutiae and exacting precision Girard brought to each project. While the variety is astounding, the more time one spends examining his output, the less disparate it becomes, and the Girard-specific language that unites an interior design to a Mexican doll to a corporate installation grows clear.
Images courtesy Herman Miller Inc./Graphics by Alexander Girard
Girard’s most commonly acknowledged contribution to the canon of modernism, and a thread that binds everything he produced, was his fearless approach to color and pattern. From the inception of the textile and wallpaper program for Herman Miller, colors hitherto considered gauche—magenta, yellow, emerald green, crimson, orange—became a part of the company’s formal vocabulary and, in time, the world’s. As Girard recounted to fellow textile designer Jack Lenor Larsen in 1975, "The simple geometric patterns and brilliant primary color ranges came to be because of my own urgent need for them on current projects. As you will remember, primary colors were frowned upon in those days; so were geometric patterns. I had the notion then, and still do, that any form of representational pattern, when used on folded or draped fabric, became disturbingly distorted, and that, therefore, a geometric pattern was more appropriate for draped fabric. Also, I was against the concept that certain fabrics were ‘suited’ to certain specific uses—like pink for girls or blue for boys." To Girard, everything was fair game for interpretation and combination.
Over the course of his 22-year tenure with Herman Miller, Girard created hundreds of textiles, both solid and patterned, in a multitude of colorways and breadth of material. While his initial years with the company could largely be defined in a supporting role (his textiles created the backdrop and covering for Eames’s and Nelson’s furniture), by the late 1950s Girard’s talents were in full swing.
The 1958 design for Herman Miller’s Barbary Coast San Francisco showroom showcased Girard’s opulent tastes, and provided a clue as to the splendors that would unfold over the following decade. On a scouting trip to San Francisco, Girard, Eames, and Herman Miller’s Hugh De Pree (D.J.’s son) chanced upon a boarded-up building while searching for somewhere to have lunch. Taking a hammer and crowbar to the layers of plywood, they began to uncover what had once been a music hall of considerable ill repute, rife with life-size nude satyrs, nymphs, and all manner of marvelous ornamentation. At Girard’s behest Herman Miller secured the property, and he set about creating a thoroughly modern interior design that would complement the location. As Interiors noted at the time, "[Girard] has out-Victorianed his uninhibited predecessors with an application of gold leaf and blue, crimson, and violet paint that would make them swoon with envy." As Hugh De Pree would later attest, "Girard’s rare gift for excitement, detail, and color made the San Francisco showroom a brilliant polychromatic landmark."
Across the country, in New York City, Girard was working on a concurrent project that would focus all of his talents, and prove to be one of his most celebrated accomplishments. LaFonda Del Sol, a restaurant housed on the ground floor of the Time & Life Building, opened its doors in October 1960, inviting diners to be completely seduced by Girard’s abstracted vision of a Latin American-themed cantina. Girard designed everything from the space itself down to the matchbooks, and collaborated with Eames on a new seating design—a variation of the fiberglass shell chair with a lower back that wouldn’t obscure the place settings—which was upholstered in dozens of colors. The primary motif of the restaurant was the sun, drawn handsomely by Girard in a sequence of iterations that appeared on everything from the menus to the server carts to the washroom faucets (and most recently a 2004 line of Kate Spade handbags). One Eames Office employee remarked that the restaurant was so exciting to be in, she couldn’t eat. Sadly, it closed in 1974.
The short-lived Textiles and Objects (T&O) shop on Manhattan’s East 53rd Street, the culmination of a decade’s work with Herman Miller, was another of Girard’s great achievements. Like La Fonda Del Sol, T&O was conceived as a total environment, where the public could buy yardage of Girard’s fabric in addition to a hand-picked selection of folk crafts from around the world. Girard worked with Herman Miller to design the entire store, including all of the storage and display units. The store was an anomaly at the time, and didn’t attract the clientele Girard had hoped for. By 1963 it was closed. Marilyn Neuhart, who worked for both Charles and Ray Eames and Girard, and whose hand-sewn dolls were sold in the shop, described it as his baby, and in a 2003 interview commented, "After that, I don’t think he felt the same about Herman Miller."
However, Girard’s relationship with the company would continue for another decade, and in 1967 they introduced the Girard Group, a collection of some 25 chairs, sofas, ottomans, and coffee, end, and dining tables, originating from Girard’s total design for Braniff International Airways. While the designs have their merit, they almost seem like an excuse for extravagant uses of upholstery in customizable combinations. As Girard himself noted in the brochure, "The outer shell may be upholstered or painted and the welt selected in one of three coordinating colors. The inner shell and cushion may be upholstered in a variety of fabrics. The permutations are infinite." The lifespan of the collection, however, was not: It was canceled the following year. "I think it was a little head of its time," says Marilyn Neuhart. "You could mix and match [so many things] and I don’t think most people were equipped to make those kinds of judgments. It was just expensive to make and expensive to market, so Herman Miller was not terribly patient with it." Today existing examples are rare and highly sought after.
After a last hurrah designing so-called "Environment Enrichment Panels" for Herman Miller’s Action Office cubicles in the early 1970s, Girard retired to his home in Santa Fe, where he had lived with his wife Susan and their children Marshall and Sansi since the late 1950s. His beloved collection of over 100,000 pieces of folk art—or, as he liked to call them, "toys"—was thoroughly cataloged by the Girard Foundation and donated to the Museum of International Folk Art in Santa Fe in 1978. The museum opened a Girard Wing in 1982 with a Girard-designed display of some 10,000 objects, a riot of color and seeming disorder underlined by an unseen precision. To this day it serves as an amazing, all-encompassing celebration of his life’s passion. Girard died in 1993, at age 86.
A 1963 memo entitled "Some Notes on the Folk Art in the Herman Miller Collection," which is attributed to Girard, contains a statement that, although referring to the subject at hand, serves as a poetic disclaimer for his own work as well: "The objects were not designed for deep contemplation but rather as simple expressions of delight, amusement or reverence. They were created by the spirit of the craftsman. Invented and fashioned by an individual for the enjoyment of others."
Providing a counterpoint to the soulless and monochromatic advocates of the period, the architect left an imprint on design with his fearless use of color and pattern.
Welcome to From the Archive, a look back at stories from Dwell’s past. This story previously appeared in the February 2008 issue.
Imported from Europe in the black-and-white pages of design journals, modernism was often criticized as soulless and monochromatic—two charges that could never be leveled against Alexander Girard. The multitalented architect and designer succinctly defined his colorful, cluttered, and bold approach as "aesthetic functionalism," with the belief that delighting the senses was just as important a function of design as any other more practical concern. There is perhaps no greater evidence of this than in Girard’s love of "unrefined and unsophisticated" crafts, which he spent a lifetime accumulating from diverse corners of the globe. These crafts informed Girard’s sensual mutation of the International Style, culminating in an output that is wholly unique and instantly recognizable.
Girard’s appointment as the head of Herman Miller’s burgeoning textile division in 1951 initiated one of the most exuberant periods in modern design’s history. At Herman Miller, Girard joined design director George Nelson and designer Charles Eames to form an unrivaled triumvirate of creative power. Under founder D.J. De Pree, the company allowed the trio free rein, and in turn, the Big Three, created designs imbued with such richness that their resonance is as powerful today as ever. However, while Nelson and Eames never left the public eye, Girard’s contributions—more decorative, more ephemeral, and less well documented—had until recently largely faded into obscurity.
"He was a designer who didn’t fit in any particular category," notes Matthew Rembe, who directs the Girard estate for máXimo. The genre-defying scope and gargantuan mass of Girard’s output is indeed impossible to pigeonhole, ranging from homes to restaurants, furniture to branding, textiles to wallpaper, exhibitions to handicrafts. All the more impressive is the attention to minutiae and exacting precision Girard brought to each project. While the variety is astounding, the more time one spends examining his output, the less disparate it becomes, and the Girard-specific language that unites an interior design to a Mexican doll to a corporate installation grows clear.
Images courtesy Herman Miller Inc./Graphics by Alexander Girard
Girard’s most commonly acknowledged contribution to the canon of modernism, and a thread that binds everything he produced, was his fearless approach to color and pattern. From the inception of the textile and wallpaper program for Herman Miller, colors hitherto considered gauche—magenta, yellow, emerald green, crimson, orange—became a part of the company’s formal vocabulary and, in time, the world’s. As Girard recounted to fellow textile designer Jack Lenor Larsen in 1975, "The simple geometric patterns and brilliant primary color ranges came to be because of my own urgent need for them on current projects. As you will remember, primary colors were frowned upon in those days; so were geometric patterns. I had the notion then, and still do, that any form of representational pattern, when used on folded or draped fabric, became disturbingly distorted, and that, therefore, a geometric pattern was more appropriate for draped fabric. Also, I was against the concept that certain fabrics were ‘suited’ to certain specific uses—like pink for girls or blue for boys." To Girard, everything was fair game for interpretation and combination.
Over the course of his 22-year tenure with Herman Miller, Girard created hundreds of textiles, both solid and patterned, in a multitude of colorways and breadth of material. While his initial years with the company could largely be defined in a supporting role (his textiles created the backdrop and covering for Eames’s and Nelson’s furniture), by the late 1950s Girard’s talents were in full swing.
The 1958 design for Herman Miller’s Barbary Coast San Francisco showroom showcased Girard’s opulent tastes, and provided a clue as to the splendors that would unfold over the following decade. On a scouting trip to San Francisco, Girard, Eames, and Herman Miller’s Hugh De Pree (D.J.’s son) chanced upon a boarded-up building while searching for somewhere to have lunch. Taking a hammer and crowbar to the layers of plywood, they began to uncover what had once been a music hall of considerable ill repute, rife with life-size nude satyrs, nymphs, and all manner of marvelous ornamentation. At Girard’s behest Herman Miller secured the property, and he set about creating a thoroughly modern interior design that would complement the location. As Interiors noted at the time, "[Girard] has out-Victorianed his uninhibited predecessors with an application of gold leaf and blue, crimson, and violet paint that would make them swoon with envy." As Hugh De Pree would later attest, "Girard’s rare gift for excitement, detail, and color made the San Francisco showroom a brilliant polychromatic landmark."
Across the country, in New York City, Girard was working on a concurrent project that would focus all of his talents, and prove to be one of his most celebrated accomplishments. LaFonda Del Sol, a restaurant housed on the ground floor of the Time & Life Building, opened its doors in October 1960, inviting diners to be completely seduced by Girard’s abstracted vision of a Latin American-themed cantina. Girard designed everything from the space itself down to the matchbooks, and collaborated with Eames on a new seating design—a variation of the fiberglass shell chair with a lower back that wouldn’t obscure the place settings—which was upholstered in dozens of colors. The primary motif of the restaurant was the sun, drawn handsomely by Girard in a sequence of iterations that appeared on everything from the menus to the server carts to the washroom faucets (and most recently a 2004 line of Kate Spade handbags). One Eames Office employee remarked that the restaurant was so exciting to be in, she couldn’t eat. Sadly, it closed in 1974.
The short-lived Textiles and Objects (T&O) shop on Manhattan’s East 53rd Street, the culmination of a decade’s work with Herman Miller, was another of Girard’s great achievements. Like La Fonda Del Sol, T&O was conceived as a total environment, where the public could buy yardage of Girard’s fabric in addition to a hand-picked selection of folk crafts from around the world. Girard worked with Herman Miller to design the entire store, including all of the storage and display units. The store was an anomaly at the time, and didn’t attract the clientele Girard had hoped for. By 1963 it was closed. Marilyn Neuhart, who worked for both Charles and Ray Eames and Girard, and whose hand-sewn dolls were sold in the shop, described it as his baby, and in a 2003 interview commented, "After that, I don’t think he felt the same about Herman Miller."
However, Girard’s relationship with the company would continue for another decade, and in 1967 they introduced the Girard Group, a collection of some 25 chairs, sofas, ottomans, and coffee, end, and dining tables, originating from Girard’s total design for Braniff International Airways. While the designs have their merit, they almost seem like an excuse for extravagant uses of upholstery in customizable combinations. As Girard himself noted in the brochure, "The outer shell may be upholstered or painted and the welt selected in one of three coordinating colors. The inner shell and cushion may be upholstered in a variety of fabrics. The permutations are infinite." The lifespan of the collection, however, was not: It was canceled the following year. "I think it was a little head of its time," says Marilyn Neuhart. "You could mix and match [so many things] and I don’t think most people were equipped to make those kinds of judgments. It was just expensive to make and expensive to market, so Herman Miller was not terribly patient with it." Today existing examples are rare and highly sought after.
After a last hurrah designing so-called "Environment Enrichment Panels" for Herman Miller’s Action Office cubicles in the early 1970s, Girard retired to his home in Santa Fe, where he had lived with his wife Susan and their children Marshall and Sansi since the late 1950s. His beloved collection of over 100,000 pieces of folk art—or, as he liked to call them, "toys"—was thoroughly cataloged by the Girard Foundation and donated to the Museum of International Folk Art in Santa Fe in 1978. The museum opened a Girard Wing in 1982 with a Girard-designed display of some 10,000 objects, a riot of color and seeming disorder underlined by an unseen precision. To this day it serves as an amazing, all-encompassing celebration of his life’s passion. Girard died in 1993, at age 86.
A 1963 memo entitled "Some Notes on the Folk Art in the Herman Miller Collection," which is attributed to Girard, contains a statement that, although referring to the subject at hand, serves as a poetic disclaimer for his own work as well: "The objects were not designed for deep contemplation but rather as simple expressions of delight, amusement or reverence. They were created by the spirit of the craftsman. Invented and fashioned by an individual for the enjoyment of others."
