Aston Martin Reveals 'Sylvan Rock', Its First Home

It’s no secret that Aston Martin’s design work is well appreciated outside the walls of the automotive industry.

And as such, the famous marque has dipped its toe into a number of endeavours including motorcycles, helicopters, boats and has now unveiled its first residence.

Designed in partnership with S3 Architecture, Sylvan Rock is a home set on a 22.2-hectare property in New York’s green Hudson Valley.

Accessed via a 610-metre driveway bordered by trees and rock walls, the main residence sees an angular form that takes its cues from the rock formations that make the surrounds so unique.

The home is encased in blackened cedar and glass and features four bedrooms, four bathrooms, two half baths and three-car automotive gallery garage (hello, lairs and galleries program). Elsewhere sees a custom wine cellar – wrapped in Aston’s signature cross-hatched lattice design, pool and an 81sqm pool house.

The living spaces give way to nature through double-height ceiling and walls of glass with a columnar fireplace the showpiece. Naturally, the interiors are furnished by Aston Martin home while the kitchen is informed by a monolithic island and private dining table fitted with Miele appliances, column refrigeration and the latest cooking tech.

The primary bedroom suite is glass-clad and cantilevers over the rock ledge to take in views of the Catskills mountains in the distance. Here you’ll also find a walk-in closet complete with a night bar for a pre-bed tipple.

The main bathroom sees two-person shower, double vanity, soaking tub and more of those natural views.

Not limited to the singular structure, the property also features multi-functional guest house “pods”, a treehouse, and an agricultural garden.

Best yet, it can be yours for approx. $10.8 million; sylvanrock.com

A historic Barbados estate with a 300-year-old villa and 11 acres overlooking the Caribbean Sea is now for sale with a guide price of $22.5 million.

The seller is Kit Braden, chairman of the U.K. branch of French beauty empire L’Occitane Group, whose family has spent every winter for the last 13 years at the island property, known as Fustic Estate.

“It’s very much a family house,” Braden said. “We love having a lot of people there. It’s a collection point to keep everyone together.”

The main villa dates to 1712, though it’s been reimagined and expanded substantially over the years.

It spans 13,000 square feet and features seven en suite bedrooms across three wings, as well as expansive verandas, stone courtyards and rows of louvered doors in gay Caribbean pastels.

In the 1970s, when the home was owned by Charles Graves—brother of British poet Robert Graves—it was reimagined by stage designer Oliver Messel, one of the foremost theater designers of the last century. Messel expanded the home, added a lagoon pool with a natural waterfall and other theatrical features, according to Braden.

“The whole place is a little bit magical,” he said.

The home sits about 350 feet above the water, and surrounded by lush gardens that slope towards the water.

“We look down through our garden—which is about 12 acres of tropical gardens and palm trees and wonderful old mahogany trees—onto the Caribbean,” Braden said.

He and his wife first saw the property on New Year’s Eve 2013, during a quick trip from where they were staying in Grenada.

The couple spent an hour walking the perimeter, some of it still untouched jungle, in the pouring rain.

“By the time we got back, I had fallen in love with it,” Braden said.

His wife, however, wasn’t so sure. But in Braden’s telling, a second visit in sunnier weather with two of their children brought her around.

“She had to be talked into that it was a jolly good idea; now she absolutely loves it,” he said.

When they bought the property, the edge that runs along the waterfront was a jungle, so they cleared the ridge and transformed it into gardens.

They also bought an additional sea-level parcel with two beach cottages, giving the property direct access to the water and the town below via a five-minute walk.

The property also has a 15-person staff, a reflecting pond, an outdoor pavilion suitable for yoga and a commercial grade kitchen that can serve more than 100 guests, according to a brochure from Knight Frank, which posted the listing in March. They did not provide further comment.

For Braden, the property is special because of its natural beauty, its proximity to the town of Saint Lucy and its history—which dates way way back to when the island of Barbados was first formed via tectonic activity.

“It was basically tectonic plates that collided about a million years ago so the seabed is the top of the hill,” Braden said. “We’re on coral rock.”

As a result, Fustic Estate includes an extensive network of caves that were likely used by the Arawaks, a Venezuelan fishing tribe that followed the fish to these islands about a thousand years ago.

“If the fish were good they’d camp here,” Braden said. “There’s evidence that they stayed there in those caves, they lived there in good winters.”

Now it’s someone else’s turn to live on the land shared by Arawaks, the plantation owners of 1712, Charles Graves and the Braden brood.

Aston Martin Reveals ‘Sylvan Rock’, Its First Home

Step inside the first private residence offered by the British marque.

Kit Braden, an executive at French beauty empire L’Occitane, has spent every winter for the past 13 years at the stone vacation home.