Space is the place According to the UN, there should be close to 9.6 billion people on Earth by 2050, and most of them concentrated in cities. This is happening in parallel to our planet’s habitable surface dwindling under the pressure of rising sea levels and desertification. The notion of “sharing space” is thus taking on an increasingly weighty, almost critical tenor. Here at Sloft, we have been contributing to the building of this idea, in our own way, for a few years now. By promoting more compact design for housing, we’ve been able to imagine beautifully stimulating and originally sensible solutions to help urban dwellers envision a refuge in our ever-expanding megacities. In this ninth bilingual edition: 8 Exclusive Home Tours: In Charenton, in Paris, in Marseille or Sydney, our new selection reveals homes that feel deeply attuned — almost like extensions of their inhabitants’ bodies — helping them situate themselves physically within their surroundings and giving them the sense of being truly in place. This is the miracle of “lived-in” dwellings, as philosopher Céline Bonicco-Donato calls them, as opposed to “interchangeable” homes for perpetual “visitors,” who may, in doing so, end up monopolizing the space (and resources) of others. A special feature on interior architecture: Sleeping at the Villa Medici The age of the “Xanadus” is behind us — those sumptuous private estates epitomized by Charles Foster Kane’s domain in Orson Welles’s Citizen Kane, a kind of primitive Mar-a-Lago inspired by historic princely residences. The Villa Medici in Rome, by contrast, moves with the times, pushing openness and the sharing of its magnificent spaces even further. A haven for artists, it is becoming a haven for all through its program converting former live-in studios into guest rooms. An exclusive interview with the artist Pier Stockholm To experience the interiority of one’s shelter as a motionless exploration of self and world is to open up vast spaces without monopolizing the Earth. Artist Pier Stockholm conceives of his studio as a first life-envelope into which he fits others, culminating in his “hut,” a poetic, exploratory refuge where he replenishes himself and expands his creative and spiritual horizons. For astrophysicist Aurélien Barrau is convinced: rather than trying to unravel every secret of the universe in a technological frenzy that propels us into interstellar emptiness, we should embrace the world’s mystery by cultivating our poetic gaze. And in doing so — by preserving it — we share it with all living beings. Eclecticism, poetry, art, escapism, beauty and good ideas are definitely not a function of square metres!
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