Luminous, other-worldly, infinitely surprising: as everyone with even a passing interest in desert environments learns, these landscapes are everything but the barren lack-of-everything that they’ve sometimes symbolised in popular imagination.
From music festivals and superstar-led rap happenings to a growing interest in the ecology of these places — accessed by relatively few yet covering a substantial portion of the earth — they have increasingly come to be understood as sites of inspiration and discovery.
Former Kinfolk editor Molly Mandell and James Burke, authors and independent Far and wide text cayleigh Bright publishing consultants, are among those who get to call the desert home. From their own base in Texas, they set out to record some of the most beautiful, fascinating, and unusual designs in deserts from Argentina to Morocco, Egypt, India, and even New Zealand.
On their journey, the pair have photographed the spaces created by the likes of Yves Saint Laurent, and interviewed the hoteliers, sculptors, environmentalists, preservationists, and many more personalities who’ve seen the possibilities of desert homes.
As design inspiration, the book is teeming with aesthetics as varied as the landscapes encompassed by the term ‘desert’. As a celebration of the road less travelled – or, more accurately in some cases, roads entirely absent – this showcase of homes in supposedly less-inhabitable landscapes is a more universal motivator for those whose design and living choices are truly innovative.
Credits
Photographs: Molly Mandell and James Burke
