journal

BenTen East, named after the street it sits on in Higashiyama, one of Kyoto’s best-preserved historical districts, has a delightfully typical façade. The simple boxy structure of the kyo-machiya, or townhouse, sits quietly like a stage for shadow play, and wooden blinds cast moody fantails of light on the ground at sunset. It looks like […]

Jill Young Rosenast and her husband Alex have a thing about buildings – more specifically, beautiful historic structures with character and great bones. Over the years, they’ve acquired them, given them new leases of life, and made them available for the rest of the world to enjoy. It all started in the early Nineties in their […]

A few miles north of Santa Barbara, just off the 101 freeway that runs from LA to San Francisco, you’ll find a tiny town called Los Alamos. It consists of one long main street that looks like it’s straight out of a spaghetti western, and on the surface it’s sleepier than a cat on a […]

Athena Penthouse is a big corner flat in the heart of Athens, located rather enviably at the foot of the Acropolis. From its terrace, the ancient temple shines in the sunset; from its balconies, the activities of the restaurants and bars provide a live show. Inside, a very special light shines on great collectible furniture […]

Style influencer, self-confessed professional tourist and general purveyor of the aspirational life, Olivia Lopez of @lustforlife recently spent a few days at Il Convento in Brando, Corsica. A beautifully-restored former convent in the heart of the mountains and the maquis, it’s the perfect decor for her sublime photographs, and right in line with her love for the […]

When it comes to design, Christian Sarubi is a jack of all trades. After a seven-year spell in Toronto designing jewelry, he returned to his native Mexico City eight years ago and started designing boutique home rentals. With a growing collection of properties throughout the city’s wildly diverse neighborhoods, he’s been indulging his love of […]

For as long as she can remember, Silvia Hengstenberg has been looking at houses with her family. Her mother, her mother’s sisters, her grandparents… Seven years ago, she and her mother Sylvia Girón took on the renovation of a family estate, Sylvia as interior designer and Silvia using her hotel consultant skills. They enjoyed the […]

New to our collection is the Rhodes Monocabin, a miniature home in Ialysos on the Greek island of Rhodes, created by Milanese design studio Mandalaki. It’s a really cool modular cabin, conceived as a “livable design object” and intended to blend organically with the natural world around it. Or any environment for that matter — the Monocabin […]

We love the work of studioarte, a design ensemble that’s based between Portugal and the Netherlands, and headed up by creative director Arnold Aarssen. Over the years, we’ve included quite a few of their stylish designs in our collection, and the latest addition is their lovely Lagoa Townhouse. After working with Arnold for some time now, we […]

The Geodesic dome is one of those structural forms that stops you in your tracks. A half sphere made up of triangles and polygons (made popular by 20th-century architect R. Buckminster Fuller), it’s not only an extremely efficient architectural device, but it also has a cool, otherworldly feel. All at once, it transports you back in […]

Do you want to celebrate and dance? Do you want to cook? Do you want to be pampered? Do you want to meet your new colleagues, imagine your next promotion… or anything else, for that matter? Nomads Apt was made to welcome creative people for any number of experiences, in a very special location built on […]

We have a special relationship with Topanga Canyon. It may be close to LA, but it feels a million miles from the big city, a tucked-away community of quirky creatives that’s full of the unexpected. It’s where BoutiqueHomes is based, and we are blessed with great neighbors – artists, architects, rebels and rock stars. Among […]

Kith & Kine is a pretty cool two-bedroom flat between Shoreditch and Islington, just east of central London. It’s a great intersection for discovering the city and its very particular local life. On one side of the skyline, there are banks and towers; on the other, old commercial and industrial buildings. Between the two, one of London’s oldest […]

When you’re fans of great architecture, having the chance to restore a house designed by Frank Lloyd Wright is something of a treat. Two years ago, Marika Broere and Tony Hillebrandt stumbled upon an ad for the Eppstein House in Galesburg, Michigan. Within days, they had purchased it. A husband-and-wife team originally from the Netherlands but […]

A few weeks ago, we received a message from Maria do Carmo, owner of the Alentejo House in Estremoz, Portugal, telling us about a book her husband João Wengorovius had just published. Consumed with a passion for haute cusine and the stories behind it, the former CEO of advertising agency BBDO in Lisbon had taken flight, […]

A garage in Trastevere, Rome, which is now a gorgeous loft. This is not an Italian movie story but reality, thanks to the taste and imagination of Ginevra Petrone. In an ancient carrozeria (garage), she and her architect built La Soffitta Trastevere. The pair tried to catch the particular light of this part of Trastevere, […]

A cluster of apartments in a seicento (17th-century) palazzo in the heart of Rome… Two minutes away from the Trevi Fountain, CasaCau is like a bubble of calm and good taste. Although each apartment has a different size and inspiration, the feeling is the same. The spirit of the Fifties, Sixties and Seventies flows through […]

Børge Ousland knows a thing or two about getting away from it all. One of the most accomplished explorers of our time, he has skied across Greenland, scaled peaks in the Himalayas, crossed the Patagonian Ice Fields, circumnavigated the North Pole in a trimaran, and trekked solo across both the Antarctic and the Arctic. In […]

Hans Jaeger is a German doctor from Munich who fell in love with the Lazio coastline, near the Gulfs of Gaeta and Naples in southern Italy. With his wife, he bought an unfinished house — a cemento armato, a concrete structure lost at the top of a hill. Thanks to a talented Italian architect, this […]

Architect Olle Lundberg was made in Sweden and born in Cincinnati, Ohio — two weeks after his parents emigrated to the US. A Scandinavian modernist by training, he has lived in California since 1980 and blends the two cultures with elegant flair. As Design Principal for San Francisco-based Lundberg Design, he has worked on all kinds […]

A typical house in between an authentic pub and an iconic Underground station welcomes you to lesser-known London. A stay at our North London Townhouse is the opportunity to experience the old blue-collar but dynamic neighborhood of Kentish Town. From every window, the city is everywhere — with its trains, its colorful townhouses, its brick walls, […]

We recently added Captains Rest to our collection — a great little cottage located in Lettes Bay Village, Tasmania. It’s a deeply intimate space, the very personal vision of designer Sarah Andrews, and filled with treasures found on her travels. An adventurous spirit with an old soul, Sarah has been traveling the world almost obsessively for many years, […]

In 2015, Elmar Weinmayr and his wife Fumie were looking for a new space for their Nichinichi Gallery and stumbled upon a traditional townhouse in the historical center of Kyoto, just on the east side of the huge park surrounding the Imperial Palace. The beautiful old building came with an attached kura, or treasure house, making it […]

Collecting great modern architecture is Christian Bourdais’ passion. With his Spanish wife Eva Albarran, this French art connoisseur has bought a huge expanse of wilderness in Spain, on the border between Aragona and Catalonia, on which to build 15 houses, each designed by one of the most creative architects of our times. For the moment, […]

Have you ever walked along a street in a new city, looked into the windows of a house you’ve never visited, and dreamed of staying there for a while? If you have, you’ll love the collection of Barcelona apartments offered by Anne Nijstad, a Dutch former graphic designer who has been in the Spanish city […]

Villa Elisabeth is a small Corsican family house with a great view overlooking the Mediterranean sea and the island of Elba. But it’s also an artist’s house, inspired by its owner, the sculptor Marie-Pierre Germain-Fortini. When she’s not in the Italian town of Carrara, where she has a studio and creates figures in white marble […]

We often come across fascinating stories within the BoutiqueHomes community, but there was something about this one that really made us pay attention. Pasadena-based graphic designer Nicolette Wales recently reached out to us, wondering if we would be interested in including her mother’s art in our new Marketplace. Ginette Bernas Wales, now 96 and living […]

In the center of the French city of Arles, only five minutes from the ancient Roman theater, Michel Montagnier welcomes us to his old Provençal house, La Maison des Arts. He has retained the light and delicate breeze of the past, but has added his own style, with a variety of artworks, furnitures, objects and […]

In Port-en-Bessin, a small Normandy fishing harbor between the D-Day beaches and Mont Saint-Michel, only two and a half hours from Paris, Astrid Barbey and Laurence Berdeaux have opened nine different vacation home rentals. They began with a tiny sailor’s house, with a fantastic view of the harbor and cool marine deco. Simple but comfortable […]

In many ways, Casa dos Passaros is typical of Portugal’s Alto Alentejo region – with its bleached white limestone exteriors, ochre trim, and granite stonework. But when you step inside the house, you realize there is so much more to it. This is a work of devotion. Designer Marisa Osorio Farinha bought the property in the 13th-century […]