How Flamingo Estate’s Dreamlike Gardens Became a Collection of Hand-Knotted Rugs 

Perched on a secluded Los Angeles hillside, Flamingo Estate’s seven-acre gardens seem almost improbable in a city better known for its asphalt. In this idyllic setting, founder and Galerie Creative Mind entrepreneur Richard Christiansen has built a lavish lifestyle empire devoted to what he calls “radical pleasure,” producing coveted pantry and wellness essentials (tomato-scented hand soap, creamed manuka honey) and collectible home objects such as the blown glass olive oil decanters developed with the late Gaetano Pesce that resemble clusters of plump olives.

Christiansen recently discovered that his venture shares remarkably similar values to Beni Rugs despite working oceans apart in different mediums. Specifically, both celebrate natural materials and champion makers whose expertise emerges through patient, hand-driven processes. Those affinities inspired an initial capsule in early 2025 after Christiansen met founders Robert Wright and Tiberio Lobo-Navia in Marrakech, where since 2018 the duo has woven hand-knotted rugs from Atlas Mountain wool in a vertically integrated workshop staffed by specialist artisans. “I loved meeting two young entrepreneurs who were forging such a unique business,” Christiansen recalls. “As I got to know them more, I came to appreciate our shared commitment to Mother Nature, to the power of the human hand, and to creating responsible supply chains.”

The creative rapport proved so strong that Flamingo Estate and Beni Rugs have reunited for a second collaboration, launching today exclusively through Design Within Reach. The five new rugs revisit the estate’s gardens, buildings, and luminous palette through fresh motifs while honoring the shared sensibilities that first brought the two brands together. “The collection started, as it always does, with the garden,” explains Christiansen, who worked with Wright and Lobo-Navia to translate the estate’s Moroccan-inspired architectural details and sun-washed surfaces into hand-knotted compositions that evoke weathered stone, marble, and ceramic. “Each design is a love letter to both the tactile and ephemeral nature of these elements.”

Rather than recreate literal botanical colors, the collection’s palette skews intentionally earthy and sunbaked, evoking late-afternoon light washing across stone, soil, and weathered brick. One rug reimagines the estate’s checkerboard tilework and interwoven brick pathways through a lively grid of deep espresso rectangles, punctuated by accents of clay red, dusty rose, and muted copper. Another pays tribute to the garden ladders used to harvest ripe fruit, alternating dusty terracotta with ochre, amber, and charcoal hues. Elsewhere, a bold border of honey and aubergine tones echoes the mesmeric light across distant Los Angeles ridgelines. The palette also draws from fleeting moments across the estate, including the early morning light that streams through the stained glass of its Studio KO–designed bathhouse and drenches its tranquil interiors in lustrous blue strands.

That Paris and Marrakech–based studio provides another thread between the partners. Back in 2019, the architecture firm envisioned Flamingo Estate as an open-air fantasia of gardens, pavilions, and sculptural concrete structures influenced by Mediterranean and North African traditions. The studio has also collaborated with Beni Rugs, making its sensibility a natural bridge between Christiansen’s idyllic retreat and Beni’s workshop. Wright believes that shared vocabulary explains why the collaboration came together so organically. “The bold terracotta hues, cacti, and tilework could be equally at home in a North African desert oasis,” he says.

Those principles also resonated with Design Within Reach, which has carried Beni Rugs for several years and views the collaboration as a natural extension of its commitment to enduring craftsmanship. “I’m always inspired by their ability to translate their passion for artisanal craft into a beautiful vision for modern living,” says Omar Nobil, the design retailer’s creative director. “Beni and Flamingo Estate epitomize the renewed reverence for traditional craft and an analog way of living. There’s an inherent trust you feel from the evidence of human touch throughout this collection. The human-centered approach to modern design is central to our philosophy.”

For Christiansen, the project revealed a newfound perspective on his longtime home. “From the first sketches to seeing the final designs in person, the process has been one of delightful discovery,” he says. “Creating a collection of rugs was something we hadn’t imagined before, and it encouraged us to see things in a different way.” Woven from those observations, the capsule is set to carry the estate’s resplendent gardens and reverence for the handmade into homes far beyond the hillside.