Good morning!
The other week, upon arriving at the São Lourenço do Barrocal hotel, in Portugal’s Alentejo countryside, I was immediately awestruck. It is one of the most immaculately conceived, almost-too-perfect-for-this-world places I’ve ever been, where the landscape (a 2,000-acre estate with a vineyard and a working farm), architecture (old farm houses exquisitely restored and renovated by the Pritzker Prize winner Eduardo Souto de Moura, who also designed the beautiful Bairro Alto Hotel in Lisbon, where I stayed earlier during this quick trip), and interiors (minimalist yet still warm and homey) coalesce in such a way that, as complex and dynamic as they all are, somehow feel simple and inevitable.
The backstory is that this property has been in the same family for more than 200 years and is now run by José António Uva, the eighth generation to live on the estate. The care that he brought to turning this place into a hotel—a 14-year process—is clear on every surface and in every crevice. It is a master class in “Slow Design.” Not so surprisingly, when I met up with Uva in Lisbon to discuss the hotel, a certain interior designer’s name naturally came up in our conversation: Ilse Crawford.
While Ilse did not design São Lourenço do Barrocal—its interiors were overseen by Ana Anahory and Felipa Almeida—her influence can be felt within its walls. Barrocal is not a lone example, either. Over the past 20-plus years, from hotels such as Babington House in Somerset, England, and Ett Hem in Stockholm; to rugs for Kasthall, leather upholstery for Edelman, and a table lamp for Wästberg; to Cathay Pacific lounges in Hong Kong, Ilse has brought her trademark quiet, sensitive imprint around the world, and in the process, subtly shifted the world of interior design. With her humanistic, systems-thinking, “Frame for Life” perspective, she has broadened definitions of home, and made a strong case that interior design is—or can be, anyway—a serious, life-transforming business.
On this week’s episode of Time Sensitive, Ilse talks with me about her path from editor to designer, and we dig into her journey in crafting beautiful, highly original spaces that push against today’s speedy, copy-paste, Instagram-moment world. As so many environments around the world become increasingly bland, uninspired, and same-same, it was refreshing to speak with Ilse, who has a holistic, long-view way of thinking about the spaces and places we inhabit. I wish for a world in which more people approach whatever they do with her level of craft and care.
—Spencer
P.S. A listener DMed me because an essay by the architecture critic Edwin Heathcote—which I quote from on the episode—resonated with her. I thought I’d include the quote here: “Luxury is no longer an idea defined by expense or display, but rather a notion of what is valuable in life. And the greatest value in contemporary life today is ascribed to time. Time to read or talk, to think or eat. But also the time which is embodied in the preparation, in the crafting of materials; this is something which can be implicit in the architecture, the furniture, and the design itself.” (You can also find this quote and the entire transcription of the episode on our timesensitive.fm site.)
