LOVE AT FIRST SITE

BELGIAN DESIGNER MAGDA De Smet and her interiors photographer husband, Claude Smekens, split their time between two very different architectures. The successful couple’s elegant town base is a classical city mansion, dating from 1900, in Kortrijk, near the French/Belgian border. Their country place is a refreshing, lightstreamed weekend getaway surrounded by the verdant forests and racing rivers of the Ardennes.

Its discovery was unplanned—certainly by Claude,” she says, citing the French expression for a lightening strike of love at first sight. “We didn’t buy it for a reason—it was in the middle of beautiful nature and I saw immediately what I could do with it,” she says. “You always know immediately when it’s right.”