Architects and Artisans

Before there was the Internet, or television or even radio, there was the residential library. And George Washington Vanderbilt’s library at Biltmore Estate in Asheville was state-of-the-art for 1895. “It was a showplace for his astonishing collections and a space for entertaining,” said Leslie Klingner, Biltmore’s curator of interpretation. “It was the television of the [...]

A lifetime working in wood has led Scott Grove to the grand prize in one of the most prestigious competitions for his craft. In fact, on August 25, he not only won top honors in the 2010 Veneer Tech Challenge in Atlanta, sponsored by Veneer Technologies Incorporated, but took home to Rochester, N.Y. an award [...]

On an existing L-shaped site that overlooks Puget Sound next to Discovery Park, once home to a deteriorating mid-century modern, a 21st-century residence has risen, phoenix-like, to reclaim vistas of water, forest and the Olympic Mountains. “It’s designed for the views outside,” said architect Andrew Van Leeuwen of BUILD LLC, the Seattle firm that worked [...]

What the politicians, economists and architects in Brasilia could not achieve in the 1960s, Andrew Klug and Murillo Meirelles have accomplished at the 1500 Gallery in Manhattan today. They have sanctified that revolutionary city built from scratch in the International style. It does not hurt, of course, that the nation of Brazil has at last [...]

Nancy Gong create arts out of glass for specific environments, seeking to find the soul of a place. “Because the majority of my work is commissioned, it’s inspired by where it’s being installed, who’s going to be experiencing it, where they’re coming from and how the building is being used,” she said. Take, for instance, her [...]

One of the most comfortable and revealing rooms at Biltmore Estate in Asheville, N.C. is not really a room at all, but a passageway nearly open on three sides, filled with low-slung, upholstered easy chairs and a series of writing tables. The tapestry hall is memorable for its near-palpable feeling of having been truly lived [...]

After three years of politics (and 35 years of a distinguished practice in Europe and the United State), Richard Meier is moving forward with his first residence for Great Britain. The planning application for his Handsmooth House, designed for comedic actor Rowan Atkinson and his wife Sunetra, was approved on August 25 by the South [...]

When first discovered in the early 20th century, Europeans thought that the brass sculptures they found buried in various sites in Nigeria must certainly have been Greek or Roman in origin. They were wrong. “Metal casting was practiced in many places in Western Africa and flourished in one small city known as Ife in the [...]

When it came time in 2005 for veteran mosaic artist Julie Richey to get serious about her work in glass, she headed off to the Sestiere di Cannaregio in Venice and the Domus Orsoni. There she found a remodeled and redesigned foundry that still produces smalti, or enameled glass, the same way it did a [...]

Twenty minutes northeast of Louisville, near Crestwood, Ky., Yew Dell Gardens were established in 1941 by Theodore and Martha Lee Klein as a commercial nursery with an extensive collection of unusual plants and outstanding gardens. After Theodore’s death in 1998, a volunteer group banded together to purchase and save his work from development, and to [...]