Table of contents for Summer 2014 in MILIEU

North Carolina’s Green River Gorge is one of our nation’s natural jewels. Its lush landscape is a mecca for adventure seekers who navigate the twists and turns of the river in kayaks and who rappel beside the picturesque waterfalls that adorn the steep ravines. Now there is another way to experience the region’s intrinsic beauty — from the tops of the trees. Open since May 2013 near the town of Saluda, The Gorge Zipline incorporates a thrilling course that drops more than 1,000 feet as it winds its way through 120 acres of old-growth forest. “We want people to feel like they are a part of the forest’s canopy when they’re here,” says Sara Bell, who owns and operates The Gorge with her husband, Tim. “We tried to cut down…

For Eduardo Arruga, a Barcelona-born, -bred, and -based designer, the Mediterranean climate and light are constant inspirations. With evident enthusiasm, he explains how Catalonia, that region of northeastern Spain along the temperate Costa Brava, has affected his design aesthetic, especially in his work on a weekend retreat in the picturesque town of Púbol. For a man as experienced in design as Arruga, the region’s ancient domestic history provides much to reference. The legacy there, in the province of Girona, which abuts France, begins with the ancient Romans and Arabs and their understanding of domes and vaults and stretches to the sinuous curves of art nouveau as exemplified by native-son architect Antonio Gaudí. It continues with the industrial materials and rectilinearity of modernism epitomized by Mies van der Rohe’s iconic Barcelona…

Sun-kissed summers at the beach. Splashing in the surf. Hunting for shells. Dining on fresh fish and shrimp. Such seaside memories tugged at Rozanne Jackson, who owns an interior-decorating business and home-furnishings shop, The Iron Gate, in Franklin, Tennessee. “When I was a child, I had fun going with my family to the coast in Texas,” she says. “Later, I lived in Los Angeles and could go to the beach. Then I moved to Tennessee. I felt landlocked!” Now, she and her architect husband, Glen Oxford, have combined their design talents to build and decorate a second home in Alys Beach on the Florida Panhandle. They also enjoy this walkable town, a New Urbanism green community planned by Duany Plater-Zyberk & Company, the firm that pioneered the movement at nearby…

Once we at MILIEU saw its playful versatility, we couldn’t resist experimenting with one of Romo Ltd.’s signature fabrics — the Ilsa Camellia. A bold, outright fun design that explodes with color inspired by Matisse’s vivid cutouts, this soft linen-cotton adds infinite interest to two French 1920s art deco bergères we found at an antiques shop and a delightful summer frock we had custom made for a young model. MILIEU recognized that the traditional floral pattern was made delightfully modern and fresh, and the fabric, which retains a slight slub effect, perfectly rejuvenates a vintage piece of furniture, so much so that it affects the way you might sit on it. And anyone young at heart will love a summer dress made from this motif featuring vibrantly scaled flowers decorating…

I came to Amsterdam to see a man hand a letter to a woman, to watch a child gleefully take a pewter pitcher given by her mother, and to meet people gathered for wine and conversation in a courtyard behind a canal house. I wanted also to see a tabletop set with a tray of oysters, a loaf of torn bread, a lemon whose peel unfurls over the damask tablecloth, and a silver pitcher with enough polish to wink at me. These scenes by Pieter de Hooch, Willem Claeszoon Heda, and other Dutch Golden Age master painters were all found at the Rijksmuseum, the world’s greatest repository of such works. I have always loved seventeenth-century Dutch painting because it reveals scenes of everyday domestic life — the rooms, the houses,…

Growing up in Raleigh, North Carolina, on the eve of World War II, Richard Hampton Jenrette was love struck — with grand Southern homes. “I guess I had seen Gone With The Wind several times by then, and it made an indelible impression on me,” says Jenrette. Even before seeing the saga of great columned mansions set against the rich verdure of the southern landscape, he had taken to drawing homes and going on long walks with his mother and sister around their Raleigh neighborhood, critiquing various buildings and asking questions about the city’s architectural patrimony. “But there was one home under construction that was the grandest thing I or anyone in Raleigh had ever seen, called Tatton Hall,” Jenrette continues. “It must have fostered in me a desire to…

Eleanor Cummings knows when she has left Houston in the rearview mirror. “The moment my tires hit the gravel roads of Round Top, I feel relief,” says Cummings, a Houston-based interior designer who has been coming to her second home in this tiny Fayette County, Texas, town for more than five years. After her hour-and-a-half drive, due west from the city, she reaches a locale “so small, you’ll miss it if you blink or wink.” Although she proclaims her love for Houston, Cummings says that upon arriving at her home, four miles from the center of Round Top, “I suddenly get a sense of who I am that I can’t always get when I’m in Houston. Cell phones barely work, nobody is on their computers all day, and there’s a…

When we bought our weekend cottage in the North Carolina mountains, our closest neighbors were the field mice that skittered across the deck into whatever space a mouse calls home. Our view was of trees, trees, and more trees. “But you can’t see the mountain,” one friend exclaimed on his first visit. “It’s the smallest house I’ve ever seen,” said another. My husband and I just nodded and smiled. Married only a few years, with a lovely but maintenance-intensive home and demanding jobs in a city 100 miles away, we’d dreamed of a place exactly like this. Small. Simple. Cozy. Where we could spend all day watching the sky or hiking the trails to the waterfall and overlooks. And when we grew weary of looking outward, we could look inward.…

Most homeowners arrive at a potential building site with a tape measure in hand. Mark Wallace arrived at his carrying a machete. “I literally had to cut my way into the land,” he recalls, “chopping, slicing, and getting through the thick overgrowth to see if the location was right.” The steep, cliffside site he needed to assess for the second home he wanted to build for his wife and three grown children was one of the most picturesque to be found along the Pacific coast of Mexico’s Nayarit state. But it wasn’t readily visible until Mark made it through the bush into a clearing. “I wasn’t there,” says his wife, Lisa Wallace, who remained at the couple’s full-time home in Littleton, Colorado, “but when I did go down to see…