This month we head to Portugal for a Destination Design that lands us by the Tagus River in Eastern Lisbon to a hotel that’s all about business and pleasure. Designed by architect Nuno Leónidas, the Myriad by SANA Hotels boasts 186 rooms featuring bright, bold colors and to-die-for views of the Tagus estuary. The “futuristic oasis” stands over 143 meters (or 469 feet) tall, making way for a massive vertical transparent atrium in the center of the hotel that provides a light-filled interior. Let’s take a tour of this glimpse of the future…

The glass paneled lobby creates a light and airy space to welcome visitors.

The interiors were designed by Teresa Leónidas, who brought in modern touches and the bold pops of color you’ll spot throughout.

The wide open space of the atrium allows for some unusual lighting to be installed. Jellyfish-like chandeliers remind the guests of being by the water.

The hotel is composed of 150 deluxe rooms, 26 premium rooms, nine suites, and one presidential suite, each with modern furnishings and the hotel’s signature red color.

Are you packed yet?

What: Myriad by SANA Hotels
Where: Cais das Naus, Lote 2.21.01, Parque das Nações, Lisbon, Portugal
How much? From approximately $300 a night.
Highlights: Beautiful views of the Tagus River.
Design draw: Sleek modern decor with bright, airy rooms. Geometric, modern architecture.
Book it: info@myriad.pt

Go virtually on vacation with more design destinations right here.

The firm of David Guerra Architecture and Interior Design took over this massive (350 square meters or 3,767 square feet) apartment in Belvedere, Belo Horizonte, Brazil, and turned it into a cozy, yet urban, home for this family with two children. The couple moved to this apartment in the city when their first child became school age and kept their country house for the weekends, so Guerra set out to bring a bit of the country coziness to these sleek city digs.

Walls were removed to create an open concept living plan between the living room and the former balcony. The balcony became a sitting area and a gourmet bar/kitchen for when they have friends over or for a quick breakfast with the family.

They brought in warm woods for the floors, and in some cases, up the walls, mixing well with the gray Mister Cryl Silestone that gives an industrial feel.

The furnishings are kept pretty neutral with shades of brown and gray throughout, interspersed with various metals and glass that create a cohesive vibe.

There are plenty of fun elements though, like the addition of the Moooi Raimond chandeliers above the long wood dining table.

Various woods were used, like mahogany field, pink mahogany, cedar, and cinnamon, creating an almost striped panel treatment on the walls.

The kitchen features an array of gray and silver finishes, including graphite Silestone on the floors, silver Silestone on the countertops, and black and gray hydraulic tiles on the walls.

The architect also brought in a wooden table he designed, as well as some bright yellow Papilio chairs from B&B Italia.

In the master bedroom, they created an oversized headboard out of mahogany.

Photos by Jomar Bragança.

Brooklyn-based Calico Wallpaper began haphazardly during the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy when Rachel Mosler and Nick Cope were stranded in their loft and out of work for a month. Instead of sitting around, Mosler got inspired to marbleize paper. Hundreds of prototype swatches later, they decided to expand them and turn them into wallpaper. Currently, they’re offering two designs that each come in three color ways: Wabi and Lunaris.

The duo partnered with Dieu Donné to create a 100% cotton fiber paper that allowed them to make the largest marbled papers in existence. These large scale originals got into Cope’s hands where he then adapted the patterns to become wallpaper (he can adapt them to fit any wall size).

Wabi’s (above and below) origins begin in ancient east landscapes, evoking the feeling of water flowing over pebbles.

From Mosler:

We wanted paint and light to dance without breaks. I’m an artist and Nick is a designer. He loved the work that I was doing, and I loved his idea to apply it to interiors.

Lunaris, full of tranquility, was inspired by NASA photographs of moonscapes and uninhabited space.

This home in the Eastern suburbs of Sydney, Australia was under construction when the homeowners decided that the interior spaces would need to be redesigned to fit the architecture of the house. They brought in the design team at Minosa Design to create a series of interior spaces that would work well for the dramatic, oversized architectural style of the home.

The interior spaces remain fairly neutral but with orange and green repeated throughout to create a colorful, continuous color scheme.

The high ceilings required a plan to address lighting through the living and kitchen spaces. Luckily the massive skylights and strategically placed windows flood the house with plenty of natural light.

In the kitchen, they incorporated a seamless Corian island and a customized hood above the range.

The powder room gets a little extra love by way of a Bisazza Endimione mosaic feature wall that’s paired with a Minosa Puddle basin that looks almost flat.

Green continues into the other bathrooms with drawer units installed for storage. The floors are covered in a Liberian limestone that is full of chocolate tones that really warm the space up.

I love the floating sinks they used.

Master suite

Bathtub storage that’s a dream come true.

A home theater room was given a darker color scheme to create a retreat-like environment for movie watching. Pops of orange are scattered throughout the space.

It even has a bar and a 1000-bottle wine cellar.

…and a nice rooftop view!

The home was designed by architect Andre Baroukh.

Above: Design by Alexandra Angle

This week CMYLK steps all the way outside. Are you lucky enough to live somewhere in which you can create an outdoor room? Some of us in New England go through all sorts of trouble to make it work for a few measly months. (I bet our Canadian and Scandinavian readers understand!) And then there’s the amount of square footage to consider. While large and looming can have its drawbacks (hmmm, what are they?), city dwellers can make the smallest slice seem like paradise. Here are three colorful spaces, large, medium, and small.

Photo by Toby Scott

via Apartment Therapy

A New York City family of five outgrew their Chelsea loft and instead of moving decided to purchase the identical apartment above theirs and merge the two. The owners brought in Design Development NYC to oversee the construction of the eco-friendly renovation and they incorporated a number of health-conscious systems and sustainable materials and with the help of architecture studio wUNDERground and Damon Liss Design handling the interiors, the family got the healthy urban home they desired.

Both apartments were gutted and the work began to reconfigure the 3,600 square feet of space. The bottom floor was transformed into the public living spaces, including a large eat-in kitchen, a playroom, and a living/dining room. The upstairs features a study, laundry room, three children’s bedrooms, and a master suite.

CityProof windows were installed along the exterior facing the street to improve thermal performance, as well as to help minimize noise. They even used recycled denim as insulation.

Loving the Lindsey Adelman fixture above the dining room table.

The family’s love of contemporary American craft details shows up throughout the space with custom pieces created in Design Development’s millwork shop.

Systems to improve the air and water qualities were installed with various filters for drinking water, showers, and humidifier.

They also integrated toy storage throughout, as well as large storage closets to house strollers, scooters, sleds, etc.

Even though the apartment is kid-friendly, they kept the furnishings fairly neutral with pops of color, like the yellow storage shelf.

Based in Manila, Philippines, Utwentysix Architecture Studio set out to create an anti-corporate environment for a start up company called Migo that specializes in media and entertainment distribution. The company acquired space in a new high rise building in Manila that was a completely bare, corporate office space with no personality. The company’s CEO wanted an office that reflected their desire to serve the people of the Philippines so the design was inspired by a bit of nostalgia for Filipinos – traditional life and homes that are still found in rural towns.

The company sought an informal space that took fun and comfort into consideration because they felt it leads to optimum performance and creativity.

The layout is open with shared workstations that promote collaboration.

The once wide expanse of space was transformed into almost an amphitheater with an elevated platform and a recessed area that helps break up the huge room, as well as define the areas.

I love the sunken round seating area!

Throughout the design, they used galvanized metal (commonly found along the streets in the Philippines) and distressed bricks (inspired by traditional Filipino houses made out of brick and stone). They also incorporated corrugated sheet metal to enclose the video conferencing “houses” (inspired by the makeshift homes made of sheet metal) and to cover walls like above.

Other salvaged materials, like wood, and upcycled furniture from old houses were incorporated to warm the space up and continue the overall feel they were looking for, as well as keep the costs down.

NOWNESS visits Italian architect and designer Claudio Silvestrin at home in London.

In Residence: Claudio Silvestrin on Nowness.com

Silvestrin lives in an East London apartment that feels like the definition of minimalism. The tall white expanses and angles are dotted with furniture and decor carefully placed as though it were an art gallery. He explains that this is a reflective space, a place from which he dreams up residences in Majorca, Zurich, or Los Angeles (for Kanye West). You wonder what’s hidden away in the apartment’s walls of storage, whether it’s as perfectly arranged. We can only imagine…

Photos courtesy of Matthew Donaldson.

The international modernist residence, Miller House and Garden in Columbus, Indiana, was commissioned by industrialist and philanthropist J. Irwin Miller and his wife Xenia Simons Miller in 1953. Owned by the Indianapolis Museum of Art, the house showcases the work of 20th-century modern architects and designers Eero Saarinen, Alexander Girard, and Dan Kiley. For this week’s CMYLK we created color palettes with Colourlovers to pair with three rooms of this incredible, pristine modern house.

In recent years, patios have morphed into outdoor rooms, used as essential square footage for living, playing, and entertaining. This is especially true on the West Coast, to the dismay of those back East. (It just doesn’t pay to gussy up for three mere months, never mind the unavoidable rain in summertime.) Well-designed exterior doors elevate how a patio looks and functions. There are a ton of options: collapsible glass walls, garage doors with an industrial vibe, and the ever elegant pivot doors, of which I present you a dozen options below. When you’re finished scrolling, you may want to re-visit last month’s roundup of modern pools.

Above: A pivot door opens from a living room to the cacti-planted patio leading down to a fire pit at the Brown residence in Scottsdale, Arizona, designed by Lake | Flato Architects.

Architect Robert M. Gurney designed the poolhouse and patio here, rich with plantings, pool, and long slabs of stone. The standing-seam metal roof and series of pivot doors complement the textured stone façade of the poolhouse exterior and hardscape.

Photo by Susan Wides

T Space by Steven Holl Architects is a newly constructed gallery onto an existing home from the ’50s located on four acres in Dutchess County, New York. The entrance door, covered in two-by-two cedar planks like the rest of the structure, pivots to reveal a plywood clad floor and sparse staircase.

Bayden Goddard Architects designed this two story, open-plan, riverfront home. The recycled timber used in the interior echoes that of the patio fencing, reached through a wide pivot door at the end of the bluestone entry.

Another view from the Brown residence designed by Lake | Flato Architects shows a closeup view of the pivot door off the dining room, which leads to the desert garden.

Chu + Gooding Architects, an Los Angeles-based firm, re-imagined this historic, 7000-square-foot residence in Beverly Hills designed in the 1950s by architect Harwell Hamilton Harris. A pair of supersize pivot doors open from an indoor/outdoor dining space to the pool patio, with no change in flooring.

Architectural firm Graux & Baeyens added an oversized, modernist pivot door encased in black to this 19th century house located by the old city harbor docks of Ghent, Belgium. The project started by stripping the dilapidated house of all excess. While the interior was gutted, the antique façade was preserved.

Photo by Karen Mendoza

Mexican firm Dear Architects’ 4 Plan House in Santa Cantarina, Mexico is a four-level, minimalist structure with luminous light effects. Here, a large glass pivot door on a stainless steel frame opens onto a walled, grassy area with a lone tree.

This is the Mill Valley, California home of Dwell Magazine founder Lara Hedberg. The facade was designed by Bob Hatfield in 1996. A new glass and steel pivot door was designed by her husband, Chris Deam and fabricated by Sand Studios, was added in a renovation.

Sheldon Harte of Harte Brownlee and Associates designed the glass entrance to the patio with lush plantings and small pool in this desert residence. The stainless steel pivot door and frame glows at night, thanks to the fiber optic lighting.

The Carillo house is another California home, this one in Pacific Palisades with pivot doors. California-based firm Ehrlich Architects chose to incorporate many smaller sized models off the living room, allowing access to the pool and distant ocean views.

Sourced from The Selby, this incredible bathroom extravaganza belongs to gallerist Sarah Cottier and photographer/gallery director Ashley Barber. A more traditional, painted white framed pivot door separates the indoors from out. Again, this is in the warmer climate of Sydney, Australia.

Want more doors? Check out Montage: 20 Exterior Glass Doors on StyleCarrot.

Situated on the shores of the picturesque lake in northwestern Michigan where Ernest Hemingway frequently spent his summers, the 3,800-square-foot Walloon Lake House turned from a small 1960′s home into the perfect family house on the water. Honoring the original structure during renovation, DUDZIK Studios used swan douglas fir, helping to connect the new home with the landscape.

The lot the home sits on slopes towards the lake making it all about the view of the blue water the lake is known for. Inside and out, wood and stone are key components helping to tie it to the natural surroundings of the landscape.

The interior spaces were rearranged, combined, and expanded to make it work for modern times.

Douglas fir was used on the ceilings and walls giving it the cottage feel of the original house, as well as bringing a little bit of the outdoors in.

Large expanses of glass provide a seamless view of the lake and the landscape while providing ample light for the interior.

DUDZIK Studios pulled double-duty on this job by handling the interior design of the project as well. They even designed some of the furniture, like the desk in the office.

Love the copper pendents in the stairwell!

Photos courtesy of DUDZIK Studios.

This Osaka, Japan-based beauty salon might have an unusual name, end…Link, but when you hear the owner’s reasoning behind it, it makes sense. They wanted this Yasunari Tsukada-designed salon destination to be “the last word in beauty.” While the business has been in operation for years, the team expanded and a larger space was necessary. So, the long and narrow, newly-rented space gives each hair stylist a more than adequate place to work.

Keeping a minimal scheme with simple wood stations and shelving, along with the chairs, gives a uniform, uncluttered look. The entire salon was painted white to give the appearance of space and cleanliness.

The designers came up with a three-dimensional lattice system that resembles parts of a jungle gym to create the stations used to store and hang things on. They then attached hooks, lighting, and glass panels to make them function for the stylists. They’re flexible and can evolve over time to suit the stylist’s needs.

Photos by Stirling Elmendorf.