A fresh breeze is blowing into the design world from the Bay Area office of this brilliantly idiosyncratic talent, who approaches his work from the perspective of a historian, craftsman, and modern-day arbiter elegantiarum. His influences range from Northern California luminaries William Wurster and William Turnbull to the radical design maestros of de Lisle’s youth in the 1980s. “The postmodernist work of Ettore Sottsass, Robert Venturi, and Denise Scott Brown is permanently branded in my imagination,” he says. “And I’ll never forget the first time I saw Philippe Starck’s Royalton Hotel. I still draw inspiration from his amazing ability to combine charming and crazy.” ► Sausalito, California; charlesdelisleom
Charles de Lisle.
