Issue link: http://papercitymagazine.uberflip.com/i/1540685
No matter the hour or the head count, he's always ready for an encore — another course, another pour, another story. chef Stephan Pyles on the map. By the mid-'80s, Roberts was working closely with Los Angeles hospitality designer Louis Cataffo, who — alongside Michael Taylor and Kalef Alaton — revolutionized California interiors with audacious scale and brilliant use of light. Roberts enlisted Cataffo to remake the Oak Lawn house as a Neoclassical composition, sketching a Palladian brief that Cataffo carried out: over-door profiles taken from Andrea Palladio's Four Books of Architecture and a dining room tuned to a near double-cube, a classic Palladian room proportion. Roberts insisted on authenticity in an era of fakery: no cast stone, no faux finishes. Instead, he used solid blocks of Texas cream limestone throughout, paneled walls in waxed mahogany and white oak, and designed mahogany windows and doors to Palladian proportions. He imported an 18th- century stone fireplace from an antiques dealer on the Faubourg Saint-Honoré and layered the interiors with centuries-old gilt mirrors, sconces, and chandeliers, many purchased when his hospitality work took him to Paris and London. Craig Roberts retired in 2018 — he now lives in Vermont and is building a house in San Miguel — yet his Dallas house remains a pivotal, if often overlooked, work in the city's architectural canon, a built testament of how his practice fused light with architecture to shape mood. His legacy spans hotels such as The Joule in Dallas, One&Only Palmilla in Los Cabos, and the Bowery Hotel in New York; flagship stores Sofas are original to the house and have been re-covered in brown mohair. The ancient Chinese vase and mid-century painting are from Nick Brock Antiques. Eighteenth-century stone fireplace from Paris. 124