Axel Vervoordt is rearranging furniture inside a sunlit penthouse as his friend, hotelier Innegrit Volkhardt, watches on. The space distils Vervoordt’s refined sense of purity, an aesthetic drawing on the principle of wabi-sabi, the beauty of imperfection. The walls are richly pigmented in earthy shades, accents of wood bear the marks of age and simple, comfortable furniture is swathed in linen. A mood of serenity settles as soon as the door closes.
This is not the inner sanctum of an…