Today for Ep33 of Thinking of Art, I spoke with Robert Couturier about his life growing up, design heroes, the design process, the importance of kindness, & much much more!

Couturier made design history in 1987 when the billionaire financier Sir James Goldsmith, who could have engaged any architect & decorator in the known world to do his bidding, followed his legendary instincts and entrusted the 32-year-old Couturier with what would amount to the single greatest private commission of modern times: the re-conception, execution, and continuous embellishment – down to the last gilded detail – of Goldsmith’s 20,000-acre kingdom on the Pacific Coast of Mexico. Crowned by a 60,000-square-foot vaulted-and-tile-domed hilltop palace called La Loma.

Couturier has contributed to major architecture and design books. He lectures widely at galleries & at arts & antique fairs, and participates in charitable and design-industry events. His work has been featured in such publications as Architectural Digest, Vogue, Vanity Fair, Town & Country, the New York Times, Conde Nast Traveler, House and Garden, the Robb Report, and Elle décor, and has distinguished the Kips Bay Boys & Girls Club Showhouse, Decorator Show House, Hampton Designer Show House, & the French American Designer Show House.

Two decades later, the NY-based Couturier maintains his place at the top of his profession, continuing to execute grand-scale commissions in the U.S., Europe, S. America, & Russia. His name, included in @archdigest prestigious annual list of the best decorators & architects in the world, has become synonymous with continental & international style. But to the deep understanding of the classical that he acquired at the Ecole Camondo in his native Paris, Couturier adds his own inimitable and witty take on things, & his design heroes remain a jaunty, motley lot (Renzo Mongiardino, Frank Gehry, Charles LeBrun, Serge Roche, Robsjohn Gibbings, Robert Mallet Stevens, Jean Michel Frank.