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In 2020, The New York Times travelled to Melides in southwest Portugal to visit Casa M, two raw aggregate volumes whose sand-like textured finishes blend into the surrounding coastal dunes. The buildings are the home of architect Vincent Van Duysen, their interiors left uncluttered and pure to allow focus to fall on the nature that surrounds the structure. Bespoke carpentry and Van Duysen’s own designs are carefully placed throughout, with visual interest arising through the home’s sensitive constellation of materials and textures: a meticulously planned palette of wood, terracotta and clay, awash in the surrounding sand, surf and Mediterranean pine. “You could call this minimal,” Van Duysen told the Times, “but it’s not minimalist.”
Throughout his career, Van Duysen has cultivated this kind of complex textural elegance, exploring the sense of life, richness and vitality generated through the careful combination of select geometries, craftsmanship and material. In 2026, the architect celebrates 10 years as the creative director of Molteni&C, where he has brought this same sensitivity to bear on the company’s furniture tradition, yet across this same time, his Antwerp-based practice has crafted a series of extraordinary spaces around the world: from a serene, modernist office in New Delhi, executed in smoked oak veneer and natural stone, to a white brick home embedded in a grove of Californian oaks and sycamores.
RE Residence Paris Ph. Matthieu Salvaing
M Offices New Delhi India Ph Piet Albert Goethals
To celebrate the past 10 years, M Magazine invited Van Duysen to select projects from this period that have most driven his practice forward and shaped his approach. We invite you to sink into the visual richness that emerges through Van Duysen’s inimitable visual language.
Main Image: Vincent Van Duysen's JNcQUOI Club Comporta.
Image: Piet-Albert Goethals
Each year at Chinese New Year, millions of journeys trace the same arc: a return from the city to the hometown, from distance to proximity, from the global to the intimate.
Discreet Alpine villas and historic landmark hotels in Italy, Switzerland, and Belgium embrace Molteni&C’s timeless elegance, marrying distinctive design with a warm feeling of home.
From the cliffs of Amalfi to the quiet stone quarries of Sicily, these extraordinary retreats are proof of how Molteni&C brings Italian design excellence to places shaped by light, history, and a slower rhythm of life.
