Design

The living-dining area of their own residence is lined with doors and windows from Phoenix Glass for Columbia Aluminum Products.

Within the 3,500-square-foot interior, the neutral setting acts as a serene canvas for the owners’ art and furniture collections. When touring the home, you’ll also find a 600-square-foot exterior terrace.

Edgeland House, built on a cliff-top lot in Austin by architect Thomas Bercy for lawyer and writer Chris Brown, is topped by a living roof that helps it blend into the landscape. The concrete, steel, and glass house is divided into two distinct public and private halves.

While Barber Osgerby has collaborated with many furniture companies—including Vitra, B&B Italia, Isokon, Cappellini, and Established & Sons, among others—the line with Knoll was among its first forays into designing upholstered pieces. "Upholstery, for us, is actually one of the most difficult things to do because we’re really into the micro details," Barber says. "Upholstery doesn’t really work like that. It’s a different skill set. It’s about stitching. It’s about where the fabric lies. It’s about the angle of the seat and how soft it needs to be at the front of the seat compared the back of the seat. It’s a whole new set of rules. The seat of a wooden chair is the same in the front as it is in the back. You’ve just got to pick the angle. Upholstery is much more complex."

The sofa is available in three different color options for the foot and six different upholstery choices. Visit knoll.com for more.

There used to be walls; now Barbara Hill's bed offers views not just of Houston, but also a French farm table surrounded by a sextet of black and white Harry Bertoia chairs for Knoll.

This is is your first furniture collection. Did you approach designing the pieces in the same way you do for architectural projects? I explored a number of themes in the Knoll furniture—such as monumentality, materiality and history—which are also evident in my architectural projects. So the formal language is shared with some of the buildings I am currently working on. There is a common line of inquiry. The aluminum Wahshington Skeleton Chair (shown above) is available in four different finishes. Its lattice pattern is reminiscent of Adjaye's design for the National Museum of African American History and Culture's facade. Photo by: Josh McHugh