Inside Carolina Irving’s Coastal Retreat Secluded on Portugal’s West Coast | Design Notes

[Music] this little house is in a village called midis which is in the alento region of Portugal it's on the edge of a rice field that ends in a lagoon and then you have the beach the rice field is incredibly beautiful because at all times of the year it changes right now the green is a fluorescent green it's absolutely amazing I've noticed throughout the years that I think the most successful Interiors are the ones that tell a very personal story my parents are Venezuelan but I grew up in Paris so our house was always a little bit formal and I think in in a reaction to that I went completely the other way pulled World changed aesthetically when I saw Christopher gibbs's house this is exactly the mix of things that I love I couldn't build a really big house because it's very protected land I could only build 90 square m which seemed very small to me at the beginning and now I love it we had a tiny kitchen before so we've made it a little bit bigger and it's really changed our lives and we decided to just do it all in wood and be very rustic I love the fact that it's an open kitchen very simple with a counter that's just unpolished marble hanging lamps are from Pooky lights the plates on top of totally Portuguese very traditional from a factory which still exists called bordalo Pino so there are lots of very Portuguese things here for instance the ceramic scon are typical from here and I loved that kind of mustardy yellow Portuguese have a fantastic weaving tradition there's some really amazing textiles and it goes very well with that kind of William and Mary black and white table I like to mix kind of high and low and I don't want things to be too prissy or sophisticated so on the table is actually an outdoor fabric the plates are from a collection that I do with my daughters Olympian ariadne this is a corner that I particularly like it's like a little altar the tiles here which I absolutely love they were made by a friend of mine in civil called Patricia Medina 15th Century Tiles but they're reproductions but she's managed to make them exactly the same as the ones in the Kaza de pilatos in Seville and they are really incredible they're completely handmade [Music] when I was about 22 23 I moved to New York and I went sou bees for a bit and then I started working for various decorating magazines I also worked for House and Garden the US version for 10 years which was great I was so obsessed with fabrics and I thought I'm not really finding what I like and in 2007 I started my my own textile business in a sitting room I like having different little sort of conversation Corners I always wanted to have a long bonquet like in ottoman houses so we thought let's just do as much as we can buil-in Furniture it's very comfortable my one big Indulgence was the floor it was the sort of luxurious thing it has this beautiful emerald green each tile is different It's Made In setubal by these company called azuos de a my favorite thing in the world that I've had for more than 25 years it's followed me everywhere it's huge gunnera leaves obviously they were bright green and over the years they've bleached and become tobacco color and I think they're even more beautiful because they look like a Japanese screen I love collecting things from from nature interesting stones that I find wherever I go I just pick them up and take them with me when I'm here I always sit on that yellow sofa which is my IKEA sofa that I love I just literally made a slip cover with the the pleats and it's incredibly comfortable this room is really everything that I like and I buy and I see and I just hang it on the walls this big dish is Spanish and I think it's a really old one and it's a technique that I think maybe only two people still do today with a spoon this one up there is a Hungarian 18th century plate with the Tulips these are four tiles that were made now by my ceramicist in Spain and he said oh well let's try and I just glued them the four of them together I thought they look quite [Music] good this is a really tiny bedroom so I thought putting the bed right in the middle of the room was actually quite nice and then you're lying down and you have this fantastic view here and the bathroom behind is all kind of built in you know the sh the L and then you have the little sink in the middle so everything needed to fit what's wonderful here is that the rice fields change every season and the stalks will come I mean hundreds of them and you just watch for hours and I had one that was that was starting to nest on the top of that tree and then I think she didn't like she didn't like it wasn't big enough so she left but I had her for about 4 days so I was ecstatic [Music] usually I like bedrooms that are very cozy but here I had no choice because of the size of it so again everything had to fit so behind the headboard is the bathroom but we thought it was a good idea to take it all the way up to the ceiling almost like a half wall and I thought it was nice to just keep the walls just whitewashed and use a minimal amount of fabric Bon is my husband he's French and he's a journalist I'm very lucky that Bon likes everything I like so that's a good thing and he's also obsessed with nature and fishing so anything that has a fish or something of the sea he [Music] collects outside we we created did all of these outdoor spaces so that we could depending on the Heat or the wind you know we'd have somewhere to sit in this part of the garden I wanted things to be quite low because I don't want to have the view interrupted I wanted it to be one kind of a continuous thing this is my little Paradise here it's really cool so when it's hot you know we have lunch here or we have coffee here the end of the day in the afternoon I just lie down here and read for hours or fall asleep or on that bed over there I think we keep changing things in the house every time and improving things I don't like it when a house is finished I think there should always be something that you're longing to have or making things better so as far as as I'm concerned I mean you know can go on and on I'll still be here [Music]

Channel: House & Garden

Views: 60,179

Keywords: alentejo, apartment tour, bright design ideas, carolina irving, coastal home, coastal retreat, decoration ideas, design notes, design tips, holiday home, home decor, home furniture, home tour, house & garden, house & garden design notes, house and garden, house garden, house on the coast, house tour, how to interior design, interior design inspiration, interior designer tour, living room design, lounge design, modern house design, portugal

Id: RQiVOGQC9Ac

Length: 8min 52sec (532 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 12 2024